


Tame the Roads That Can't Be Tamed

by Linsky



Series: Wolfverse [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Coming Out, Cuddles, Discussion of Abortion, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, Mpreg, Nipple Play, Pregnancy Kink, internalized prejudice, wolf babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-25 16:54:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 47,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7540531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linsky/pseuds/Linsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patrick’s flown a million times. He’s never gotten airsick before. Even on last year’s epic flight to Denver, when they hit massive turbulence and half the team was groaning over barf bags, Patrick’s stomach was fine. And maybe he’s sick, sure—but why doesn’t he feel sick the rest of the time? Why is it only mornings and—</p><p>Oh.</p><p>Oh, no.</p><p>Oh fucking <i>no.</i></p><p>(Or: In which it is difficult to be a wolf in the NHL, especially when you're not that good at condoms.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The long-promised sequel to [(All My Life I've Been) Burdened by the Dreams](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4257579/chapters/9636789)! I strongly recommend reading that one first. This one might kind of make sense without it, but you'd be missing out on a lot of world-building and character background.
> 
> Endless thanks to Tirsh for betaing, Kristin for not letting this go, Kristie for only distracting me sometimes, Holly and Mallory for cheerleading, Sheena for loving everything, and Madelyn for being the Spartan ruler of the 1988 Finish Stuff Challenge. This would probably not exist without all of you. <3
> 
> (I'll post spoilery details about the discussion of abortion tag in the end notes when we get to that chapter.)
> 
> Occasional [Tumbles](http://linskywords.tumblr.com/) here!

They have a _lot_ of sex following the Cup win.

Patrick doesn’t remember ever having had this much sex. Well, no, he’s pretty certain that he’s never had this much sex. But he can’t even remember having wanted this much sex outside of heat. He wants Jonny inside him, all the time, Jonny’s hard cock pounding into him and making him come until he lies there with blurry vision and every nerve thrumming. Jonny’s mouth on his, Jonny’s sweaty skin against his body. That bright, almost surprised look Jonny gets when something feels really good. Even when they’re not having sex, Patrick wants him: wants Jonny’s laughter in his ear and his shoulder under Patrick’s cheek, Jonny’s breath brushing his skin.

It’s a really good thing their teammates are used to Patrick being cuddly in public.

“Smile for the camera,” Sharpy says at one of their post-Cup celebrations, at a bar where Patrick’s curled into Jonny’s side and practically falling asleep on his shoulder because it’s four in the fucking morning and they should go home but they _won the Cup_. Patrick’s pretty sure the bar isn’t even supposed to be open anymore, actually, but that’s the magic of a Cup win.

“Fuck you,” Patrick says sleepily.

“Nah, I like to leave that to Abby,” Sharpy says, before he blinds them with the flash. He ruffles Patrick’s hair. “Ah, Peeks. Most photogenic future bridesmaid a guy could ask for.”

“Not a bridesmaid,” Patrick mumbles.

“Hey.” Jonny stirs, finally, because apparently even a flashbulb as bright as the sun has a thirty-second delay. “Who’s a bridesmaid?”

“No one,” Patrick says.

“Don’t be silly, Peeksy, I would never strip you of your title,” Sharpy says, but Patrick’s distracted by the way Jonny’s licking his lips in his half-asleep state. Jonny’s eyelids are kind of heavy, lashes sweeping down the way they do sometimes when he’s lost in pleasure, and they already fucked twice before leaving the house that evening and another time earlier in the day, but wow, Patrick’s hole is getting wet again.

Jonny looks at him, and his eyes sharpen a bit. Jonny always claims he can’t smell Patrick’s arousal the way another wolf could, but he usually seems to know anyway. The pressure of his shoulder against Patrick gets more insistent, and his gaze more intense.

“What do you think, time to clear out?” Jonny asks, voice a little heavy.

Patrick smirks. “You don’t think we should stay a while longer?”

“No,” Jonny says, and Patrick really wants to reach over and see if he’s getting hard, but oh right, Sharpy’s standing right there.

“Hold the phone,” Sharpy drawls, “neither of you wants to hook up with anyone?” But Patrick and Jonny are already out of the booth and heading for the door, Patrick falling behind so he can watch Jonny’s ass as he walks.

***

Jonny’s family is in town for the celebrations, but they’re staying at a hotel. It’s a good thing, on nights like this.

They’re barely inside before Jonny’s pulling Patrick’s clothes off, struggling with the buttons of his shirt and trying to kiss Patrick’s neck from behind while he tries to wiggle around and do something about Jonny’s shirt, too. Jonny’s cock is already hard against his ass, and that makes it harder to focus on everything: harder to undo buttons when he keeps having to stop and shiver, stop and push back and feel the gush of slick at the insistent pressure of Jonny’s cock. It would be easier if Jonny could keep his hands off Patrick’s ass, but he can’t, and now Patrick’s shirt and Jonny’s are both being neglected so that Jonny can knead Patrick’s asscheeks and Patrick can push helplessly into his hands.

“Fucking hell, Jonny, why do we wear clothing,” Patrick mumbles.

“Huge mistake,” Jonny says, and then he pulls Patrick’s shirt straight off over his head, half a dozen buttons still hanging on. Then he’s really all over Patrick: hands sliding down his chest like he hasn’t touched him in weeks instead of hours, lips and teeth against the back of Patrick’s neck. Jonny’s cock is snugged up against Patrick’s ass, and his hips are rolling. Patrick’s lost to it, in a daze of Jonny’s hands on one side and his cock on the other and his own cock so hard it’s strangling in his pants.

Jonny pushes him away, abrupt, just a few inches, and Patrick whines. “Bedroom,” Jonny says.

It’s his low voice, the one he gets sometimes when they’re like this, and it never fails to make Patrick shiver deep down in his belly. He has enough idea of what’s coming next that he doesn’t object when Jonny wraps two fingers around his wrist and takes him down the hall to the bedroom.

Jonny doesn’t touch him when they get there: just turns hot eyes on him and says, “Strip.” The word rolls through Patrick’s stomach and he does, fingers fumbling at his fly and his cock springing free.

Jonny’s doing the same thing opposite him: tearing off his shirt and pushing his jeans to the ground. When Jonny’s naked, Patrick’s eyes fix on his cock, dark and long, and then skip up to Jonny’s face.

“Are you wet?” Jonny asks, voice still a low rumble.

Patrick nods, and he can feel his pulse deep, low, in his ass and in his cock.

“Lie on the bed,” Jonny says.

Patrick’s body feels different as he obeys: taut, the tension almost a pleasure of its own. He can feel the sheets, crisp and cool, against his skin, and he knows there’ll be a damp patch where his ass is so ready for Jonny’s cock.

Jonny’s eyes are on him as he lays himself out. “Good,” Jonny murmurs, and he steps closer. Patrick’s breathing ratchets up at his approach, at the way Jonny’s eyes are drinking him in. He never knows which of them it’s for, when they do it like this, but in the moment it doesn’t matter: he feels the moment ringing through Jonny’s body and his own. This is for both of them.

Jonny steps close enough that Patrick’s tingling. Jonny’s eyes on him are like a brand. Almost, but not quite, as good as a touch. His skin is aching for it.

“Good,” Jonny says again, “you’re good,” and he brushes his fingers lightly over Patrick’s belly.

Patrick whines and throws his head back. The touch shimmers like electricity all over the surface of his skin, and he just wants—

Jonny lowers his head, teeth closing on the skin of Patrick’s neck. Patrick gasps, and Jonny’s scent spikes. Jonny worries at him a little, not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to transform Patrick’s whole body, turn him in an instant from ready into desperate, whole body opening and ripening and ready to be taken. Every exhale is a moan.

It always feels weightier when they do it this way. Rich with ceremony, like they’re themselves and also participants in something larger, older. Patrick’s body is helpless with the giddy strain of it. Jonny’s hands smooth down his torso and thighs, and he feels some of his tension release at the pleasure of the touch. He opens his eyes and finds himself looking into Jonny’s, dark, intense.

“Alpha,” Patrick says, reverent, and Jonny growls and launches himself on top of him.

At moments like this it’s almost impossible to believe that Jonny isn’t another wolf. He seizes Patrick’s mouth fiercely, the way an alpha wolf would do, and his smell is everything Patrick’s ever wanted: rousing and hot and hungry and heady, getting into Patrick’s nose and under his skin and making him arch into Jonny’s insistent touch.

It doesn’t matter that Jonny’s not an actual alpha, because he’s _Patrick’s_ alpha.

Jonny’s cock is making little abortive thrusts between Patrick’s thighs, and it almost hurts that Jonny isn’t inside him yet. Patrick moves his legs to either side and tries to communicate that through the volume and pitch of his moans, and Jonny gets it, of course he does, because he’s grabbing a condom from the nightstand and pushing eager, clumsy fingers down between Patrick’s legs. As if there could be any doubt that Patrick’s ready for it, that he’s already dripping wet and gaping. Jonny’s fingers press against the sensitive skin, enough to have Patrick pushing into it but not enough at all, and he makes a pleading gasp.

“God, you’re so wet,” Jonny whispers. “You’re always so wet, you always want it so much, like you were just made for me—for my—”

Patrick keens and pulls him in, and then Jonny’s cockhead is bumping up against his hole and it’s only a few seconds of sweet agony before Jonny’s pushing in at last, the fullness an urgent relief.

Jonny sucks in air through his teeth, and the feel of his cock sliding in swoops through Patrick like freedom. Then Jonny stutters out a little and pushes back and the sensation roughens, darkens, until it’s licking through Patrick like fire. He grabs desperately at Jonny and holds on as Jonny slides out and in again. They’ve done this—they’ve done this so many times—but it’s like it’s new, always new, always the most Patrick’s ever felt in any given moment. He feels the memory of the Cup win roll through him, Jonny on the ice with silver above his head and his face glowing as he held Patrick’s eyes, and it adds an edge of victory to their union now. They did that together on the ice, and they’re doing this together here, and it’s all part of this soaring feeling now, of how much he loves—

“Jonny,” he gasps, _“love_ you,” and Jonny thrusts in hard and fumbles his hand onto Patrick’s heart.

“Fuck, Patrick,” he says. “Love you too,” and his hand slides up to Patrick’s shoulder, thumb just digging into the spot where his teeth closed earlier, and Patrick’s vision goes white. He’s rolling into it, greedy for Jonny’s cock, and Jonny’s just nailing his prostate and Patrick’s lost to it.

He falls apart into a million pieces when he comes, shaking and swearing and pushing into it and feeling all of his nerves spark and just so, so lost. But it’s okay, because Jonny’s there, all around him as he comes down, Jonny’s mouth gentle on his chin and his hips thrusting savagely into Patrick’s slick ass. Patrick can feel Jonny’s orgasm take him, and it’s almost as good as having a second one of his own: the way Jonny’s body shakes out of control in his arms, seized by something beyond the both of them and leaving him a panting mess with his head on Patrick’s shoulder and his cock still inside.

Patrick snugs his heels up against Jonny’s ass, because he loves this part: the part where neither of them is desperate anymore and Jonny is his. Jonny’s always his, he knows that, but not usually lax and sweating and holding him down and actually _inside_ of him. Jonny knows how much he loves it, and he doesn’t try to move away: just nuzzles against Patrick’s neck as their breathing slows and the heat in Patrick’s veins settles into something glowing and warm.

Then: “Going to lose the condom,” Jonny murmurs, and he does pull out then, and does something with the condom, but then his thumb slides back into Patrick’s ass and Patrick relaxes.

He knows it’s not normal, not even a normal gay thing, the degree to which he loves having something up his ass. The way his ass is still slick because there was no lube to be absorbed—because even now he’s producing his own slick, easing the way for Jonny’s fingers to rub against the sensitive flesh. But it’s hard to hate the wolf parts of him when Jonny’s touching him like this. When Jonny has that look of wonder on his face, that he can do this.

It has to be five a.m. by now, and Patrick can feel the sleepiness coming. But he’s never going to stop when Jonny’s playing with his ass. Jonny puts his head down on Patrick’s chest, right below his sternum, and his fingers keep playing, idly coaxing more slick from Patrick’s hole, the one good thing about being a wolf.

“Have you thought any more about telling Sharpy?” Jonny asks, and Patrick goes stiff.

Jonny reacts right away, moving up and taking his mouth, calming him with kisses until Patrick can breathe again. Jonny’s fingers haven’t left his ass: they’re anchoring him, and Jonny knows that, knows how to soothe Patrick like this, after eight months together.

“It’s okay,” Jonny murmurs into his mouth. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I was just wondering.”

Patrick breathes. It’s not—he and Jonny have talked about this before. He’s trying to get more comfortable with it, with the idea of someone else knowing he’s a wolf. Someone whose arms he can’t tumble into after he tells them, someone who can’t prove they’re okay with it by the way they kiss him. Someone who isn’t Jonny.

Jonny’s here now, gently brushing his lips over Patrick’s cheek. His whole body warm against Patrick’s.

Patrick lets out a gust of breath. “Yeah,” he says. “I have.”

Jonny hums against his cheek. “Okay,” he says. “Let me know if you want to talk about it.”

Patrick doesn’t, not right now. He wants to turn Jonny’s head and find his mouth again and kiss him until they’re too tired to keep their eyes open. And so he does.

***

Normally Patrick would go back to Buffalo at the end of the season, but there’s no way he and Jonny are getting on separate planes this summer. If they had been knocked out of the playoffs, maybe they would have spent some time in Buffalo together—maybe even some in Winnipeg, though Jonny’s family doesn’t know the deal yet—but both their families are in town for the Cup celebrations, and by the time those are winding down, it’s coming up on July and Sharpy’s wedding, and it’s just easier to stay in Chicago, camping out in Jonny’s condo and spending a lot of time in bed.

“We should start training soon,” Jonny says one morning when Patrick’s woken him up with a blowjob and he’s just come down his throat.

“What, this isn’t enough exercise?” Patrick asks, crawling up over his body and wondering how long it will take before Jonny’s hard enough again to fuck him.

Turns out, the lag time is considerably less if Jonny eats him out in the interim.

They don’t spend every minute together. For one thing, Sharpy keeps having Patrick over to his house for what he calls bridesmaid brunches, but which are really just brunches, because Patrick is not a bridesmaid.

“You realize Abby gets to pick her own bridesmaids, right?” he asks.

“Yes,” Sharpy says, “but you’re _my_ bridesmaid.”

This is so ridiculous that Patrick doesn’t even bother to refute it. “As long as I don’t have to make any centerpieces,” Patrick says, and watches suspiciously as Sharpy’s eyes develop a gleam.

What he does have to do is plan the bachelor party. Patrick is very on board with this.

“I thought a bachelor party was supposed to be, like, the week before the wedding,” Jonny says while they’re waiting in line outside the club. Waiting, because Jonny is a polite Canadian weenie who won’t go to the front and let the bouncer wave them in ahead of the line.

“Sharpy wanted to do it early so that some of the guys would still be around,” Patrick says. It’s dark, and none of the other guys are here yet, so he slides his hand into Jonny’s back pocket. “Besides, this way maybe we’ll get two parties.”

“Yippee,” Jonny says, but it comes out all breathy instead of sarcastic because of the way Patrick’s kneading his ass. His eyelids fall to half-mast, and Patrick wonders if maybe, if they turn towards the wall and Patrick gets his hand in the front of his pants instead, if he can get Jonny to—

“There you guys are,” Sharpy says. He has Duncs and Seabs with him. “Why aren’t you in the club?”

Patrick eases his hand out of Jonny’s pocket. Slowly, because Sharpy’s the type to get suspicious at sudden movements. “Because this loser didn’t think it was right to cut the line.”

“Fuck that,” Sharpy says. “I’m getting married.”

“In over a month,” Jonny says, but he follows them to the front of the line.

The bouncer waves them in, of course—they just brought the Stanley Cup home to Chicago—and inside it’s dark and crowded and full of the kind of music that thumps in Patrick’s chest and makes him want to move.

It’s one of those nights, the kind he doesn’t have very often anymore, when he wishes he could wolf out and go running across empty fields under the moon. He hasn’t done that in years, not since the NHL started looking like a definite and not just a possibility, but sometimes the urge bites into his flesh.

Fortunately, there are shots to be had, and dancing. Not that that’s without its own dangers: Jonny’s there, and the music is a low grinding throb, and there’s really no way to move to that music that doesn’t make Patrick want to sidle up to Jonny and melt into his body. Especially not when Jonny’s moving next to him, only a few inches away but not close enough, hips moving and a sheen of fresh sweat on his neck.

Patrick swallows down the urge to lick it. Even if his teammates weren’t around, it wouldn’t be safe for him to get too turned on in a crowded space like this, where there are too many scents for him to have warning if another wolf gets too close to him. He doesn’t smell strong himself, hasn’t wolfed in too long for that, but omega slick can be distinctive.

He turns and starts joking with Sharpy instead. Sharpy has a girl on each arm, each of them dancing and kind of humping the air while Sharpy makes a pleased and self-mocking face.

“Wow, Sharpy, that’s some action you’re getting,” Patrick says, and Sharpy grins and makes a little bow.

“Please, feel free to join in,” Sharpy says, and one of the girls laughs and starts dancing up on Patrick. That’s safe: she’s hot, but he’s not about to get turned on by her, and she’s mostly not serious anyway. All four of them are being kind of silly, wiggling their hips in the air, and Sharpy’s fanning himself and joking about how the girl dancing with a solid six inches of space between them is putting his marriage vows in danger.

Then a different set of hands slides onto Patrick’s hips, and everything changes.

He knows it’s Jonny behind him without having to think. It’s an instinctive knowledge, the way he can feel his own limbs or the blood pumping through his body. Pumping into his cock, now.

He pushes back into Jonny’s touch automatically, and Jonny slides his hands forward to pull Patrick snug against his chest. Patrick lets his head dip and breathes hard through his mouth. They can’t, not here, not with Sharpy four feet away, but Jonny’s cock is a bulge against his ass and the air feels too thick now.

Jonny’s fingers dig into the front of Patrick’s hips. His lips brush against Patrick’s hairline, and Patrick’s trying not to pant. “Jonny,” he says, helplessly, as the beat of the club thrums through him and Jonny’s lips part to reveal the press of teeth—

“What the hell, man?”

It’s loud in the club, but not so loud that Seabs’ shout can’t be heard. Patrick startles and feels Jonny do the same, moving away, and they both look toward the bar, where Seabs is glaring at this guy who’s getting into his face.

“You stay away from her,” the guy growls, and Patrick sees the girl right behind him, the one that Seabs was probably standing next to when this whole thing started.

“Hey, sorry, didn’t mean anything by it,” Seabs says, but they guy doesn’t move back. Seabs probably has half a foot on him—oh, and is a professional hockey player—and this moron still looks like he’s about to clock him.

“What’s going on?” Sharpy asks, waltzing up, all smiles, clapping Seabs on the back. It’s a move calculated to defuse the situation, but the other guy’s eyes just flash with anger.

“He was bothering my girl, that’s what,” the guy says, and he shoves Sharpy out of the way and rounds on Seabs.

“I was just trying to get a drink!” Seabs says.

Something’s not right here. Patrick knows Seabs, and he’s not the kind of guy to be sleazy to a girl he just met. Unless the girl was trying to make her boyfriend jealous, or—

Oh fuck. Oh _fuck._

He doesn’t bother taking another sniff; he doesn’t need it. He turns to Jonny, who’s just about to spring into the fray after Sharpy and Seabs, and grabs him on the arm. “Jonny,” he shouts, just loud enough to be heard by Jonny and no one else above the club noise. “He’s a wolf. They’re wolves.”

For a second Jonny’s uncomprehending, clearly caught up in the idea of diving in and fighting back. Then his eyes widen, and Patrick can tell he doesn’t need to say the rest: it’s not just that they’re two wolves who happen to be standing together. There’s a bond there, and that means that if the guy even thinks he perceives a threat, he won’t be talked down easily.

“Go,” Jonny says, and Patrick does.

He pushes through the crowd of the club until he feels like he can breathe again. He’s itching to be back there, going crazy at the idea of having sent Jonny ( _mate, alpha_ ) into a fight where he’s not backing him up, but he can’t risk it. Can’t risk one of the wolves smelling him and figuring it out.

He reaches the wall on the far side of the room and sags against it. This doesn’t happen very often, that he knows of. Once in a while there are news reports of a wolf attacking a human, sometimes even in wolf form, and it always gets a lot of attention, people talking about how wolves shouldn’t be allowed to roam free and how they’re a danger to society et cetera. But usually nothing comes of it, because the attacks are so rare.

Weird that something would happen tonight. But Patrick remembers the edgy feeling he’s had all evening, the desire to run, and he counts forward on his fingers.

Yeah. It’s a full moon tonight. Patrick hasn’t been keeping track, really, because it’s not like he does anything different on them—can’t wolf out, can’t run—but he still knows when they are. And yeah, that might have made the wolf by the bar a little on edge. A little more likely to react when it seemed like someone was hitting on his bondmate.

He wonders how often this sort of thing happens on the full moon: fights that aren’t very strongly provoked, where no one figures out that the person snarling at them with little reason is a wolf. Most humans can’t tell the difference unless the person actually wolfs out in front of them.

Wolves, though. Wolves can tell another wolf every time.

Patrick knows he should stay here by the wall for a little while, just in case the wolves are still around, but he can’t make himself do it. Can’t stay over here when he left Jonny jumping into a fight, when he doesn’t know how it turned out.

Seabs and Duncs and a couple of the other guys are in their private party room when Patrick makes his way back to it. “It was just so fucking weird,” Seabs is saying, while someone hands him a bottle of the good vodka. “I mean, I didn’t even hit on her. I was just saying hi.”

“Well, what can you expect from a wolf?” Duncs says, disgust in his voice, and Patrick jerks in surprise.

They know. How can they know?

It doesn’t matter, he reminds himself the next moment. It doesn’t matter that they know, and it doesn’t matter what they think of wolves, because they’re never going to find out Patrick is one. But he feels shaky with adrenaline anyway.

“There you are,” he hears, and he turns to see Jonny coming into the room. Patrick wants to collapse into his arms, has to check himself to keep from falling forward—something he’s usually good at, in public, but not when he’s unsettled like this. He gives a little smile instead.

“You okay?” Jonny asks, and Patrick can tell he’s holding himself back, too. He’s standing close to Patrick, but there’s at least an inch between their arms, and that has to be deliberate.

“Pretty much,” Patrick says, and wow, he doesn’t usually have quite this much trouble not touching Jonny in public. “What happened?”

“The guy called her his bondmate,” Jonny says, and Patrick sucks in a breath. That would be a giveaway, even to a human. “She pulled him back, but, uh, not before management got involved.”

Patrick doesn’t need to ask how that went. There’s no way the club would have let two known wolves stay on their floor if there’d been even the faintest whiff of trouble.

“Hey, you okay?” Duncs comes up and claps Patrick on the back. “Pretty crazy, huh?”

Patrick forces a smile. “Yeah.”

“I can’t believe they even let people like that into clubs,” Duncs says. “Like, there are girls here. Who knows what an animal like that might get up to, you know?”

He’s already turning away, shaking his head, but Patrick feels Jonny stiffen next to him. Patrick shoots out a hand and grabs Jonny’s wrist. “Leave it,” he says in an undertone.

Jonny looks at him, eyes flashing. “But he—”

“Not worth it,” Patrick says with gritted teeth, because, yeah, he should probably let Jonny say something. But his throat is tight with fear and all he can think is that he can’t get found out. He wouldn’t survive that. “Please.”

For a second Patrick thinks he’s going to argue, but then he just says, “Okay.” He slings an arm over Patrick’s shoulder, the kind if gesture that could be just buddies, but he pulls Patrick close against his side. “Come on. Let’s toast the groom.”

***

Patrick waits till the next day to send the text.

He doesn’t want to send it at all. He got added to the group text a few months ago, but it doesn’t get used that much, probably because any group text that contains both Sidney Crosby and Claude Giroux isn’t going to stay peaceful for long. Patrick’s sent something to it maybe twice, and it feels like he’s making too big a deal out of it, sending something now.

But this is also the kind of thing Sid likes to know about. And if he texted just Sid, Sid would want to know why he wasn’t using the group text, so Patrick gets over himself and does it.

 _FYI, Seabs got in a fight with a wolf in a club last night,_ he sends.

He gets something back from Sid right away. _Fuck. He okay?_

 _Yeah, just kinda shaken. Bondmate talked the guy down,_ Patrick says.

 _Glad to hear it,_ Sid says, with a period at the end and everything, because he texts like an old man.

 _Ditto,_ Eric Staal sends a couple of minutes later, and Patrick can’t believe he’s on a group chat with these guys sometimes. Eric’s brother Jordan is less intimidating, but still, it’s quite the group. Then, from Eric, _Hey, anyone we should be watching out for in the draft class?_

 _check out the kid who’s going to boston he seems omega-y,_ Kesler sends, and Patrick makes a face at his phone. Kesler thinks everyone seems omega-y, especially if they’re young and hot, which Patrick guesses the Seguin kid sort of is, even if he’s not Patrick’s type.

Jonny rolls over and plants his face in Patrick’s chest. “Too early for phones,” he grumbles, and Patrick grins.

“You have some other activity in mind?” he asks, and it takes Jonny a minute to get with the program, but it turns out that yes, he does.

***

Despite the thing at the club, Patrick still wants to tell Sharpy.

He’s been turning it over in his mind for a long time. There’s a big part of him that never wants anyone to know if they don’t have to, that thinks Jonny and his family can be the limit of the circle and that’s fine. Sharpy may not have been the one saying those things about wolves at the club—but he might agree with them, if he were asked. Lots of people would.

But there’s another part of Patrick that’s tired of having this thing he has to remember to filter for—this big part of him that he has to build a wall around every time he interacts with anyone. Especially someone he’s as close to as Sharpy.

“You know he won’t look at you any differently,” Jonny says, one night when Patrick’s supposed to go over to Sharpy’s for dinner.

“Sure,” Patrick says, though actually he doesn’t know anything of the kind. Of course Sharpy will look at him differently. He’ll look at him like a wolf.

“He’s known you for years,” Jonny says. “The guy loves you. I mean,” he says, lips quirking, “not exactly like I love you, but…”

“Oh, no?” Patrick steps forward, fits his body against Jonny’s, because that’s so much easier than thinking about this. “How is that, exactly?”

“Well,” Jonny starts to say, and then he dips his head and gives Patrick a slow, hot kiss.

Patrick’s thirty minutes late for dinner.

“Thank God you’re here,” Sharpy says when Patrick opens his front door. He doesn’t sound like he’s being sarcastic, which is weird, but it might be related to the number of origami cranes around him. “Abby wants five hundred of these by the time she gets back from bridesmaids’ night.”

Patrick follows him inside. “I hope this means you’re not going to marry her.”

“Are you kidding?” Sharpy says over his shoulder, as he leads him to a table covered in colored paper. “She could ask for five thousand paper cranes, and she’d still be way better than I deserve.”

Patrick laughs. “You’ve got that right.” Sharpy is good at that: at recognizing the value in the people around him. At—

He’s going to do it, he knows then, and the thought makes his hands shake.

He waits until after dinner. Sharpy’s grilled them some steaks, and they’re sitting on the back patio, away from delicate colored paper that could get spilled on. Sharpy clears the plates and says, “All right, Peeks, paper crane time. You want reds or blues?”

Patrick bites down on his lip, hard. “Actually,” he says, “I need to talk to you about something.”

Sharpy keeps clearing the plates. “If this is a tactic to get you out of crane-folding, it’s not going to work.”

“No, I—” His hands are shaking again. He spreads them on the patio table and takes a deep breath. “I just, I don’t know how to—”

“Shit.” Sharpy does stop, now. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. I just.” Wow, it’s really warm out here. Shouldn’t there be more air, outdoors? “I need to tell you something. It’s, uh, kind of out there.”

“Okay, hold on.” Sharpy puts up a hand and pulls out a chair to sit down again. “I wasn’t going to mention this, but I think it’ll save us both a lot of trouble if I tell you that I already know.”

Something very cold and sharp slices through Patrick’s belly. “You—already know?”

“It’s pretty obvious,” Sharpy says, rolling his eyes, and okay, now there’s too much air, and Patrick’s going to hyperventilate. “I think everyone knows.”

“What—that’s—” No. Everyone can’t know. Patrick’s been so careful. He hasn’t wolfed out in years; even the NHL wolves didn’t figure it out till last year. There’s no way they could know.

“I mean, the only way you could be more obvious is if you made out at center ice,” Sharpy says, and—oh.

 _“Oh,”_ he says, and he can feel his cheeks heating up. “No, it’s—not that.”

Sharpy levels him a look. “You’re telling me you and Jonny haven’t been living inside each other’s pants all year.”

Jesus. Patrick’s face is going to actually catch fire. “Um. Well, uh. That’s…not what I was going to tell you.”

“Okay.” Sharpy tips back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. “This should be good, then.”

Patrick takes in a breath and lets it out in a slow stream. He can feel the words at the front of his mouth, ready to be said, but—it’s not just the words. It’s not just how Sharpy reacts to them now. It’s everything after that, when he has to see Sharpy and know that he knows, and maybe Sharpy will treat him differently, no matter what Jonny says, obviously he will, and—

And he just has to say it.

He takes in another breath. “I’m a wolf,” he says.

Sharpy stops moving, chair still tilted.

He’s looking at Patrick, and his eyes go blank a little. Then he unfreezes, squints his eyes, shakes his head. “Sorry. Run that by me again?”

“I’m—” Patrick swallows hard. “A wolf.”

Sharpy sits still, blinking at him, and Patrick waits, stomach roiling, hands clenched around the edge of his chair. This is worse than being on the bench during the Stanley Cup finals. If Sharpy doesn’t say something soon—

“So…” Sharpy says. “Like…a wolf-wolf.”

Patrick nods. His mouth tastes sharp and metallic. “That’s pretty much the only kind.”

“That’s—wow,” Sharpy says. He blows out an audible breath. “You mean, like, if I asked you to wolf out…”

Patrick starts to nod, then shakes his head. “I can’t. I mean, I could, but…not if I want it to stay a secret. I can’t—I can’t smell like one.”

“Holy hell.” Sharpy tips the chair back down and leans forward. “Wait, so does anyone know? Does—well, Jonny,” he says, answering his own question.

Patrick nods. “Jonny. My family.” He takes a shaky breath. “That’s pretty much it.”

Sharpy’s eyes widen at that. “Christ. That must be awful.”

Patrick stares at him. Of all the reactions he was expecting… “I—what?”

“I don’t even know how you’ve kept that a secret so long.” Sharpy runs his hand through his hair. “You’re just—living like this, then? Not wolfing out?”

“Well—yeah.” How else is he supposed to live? “I’m sorry. That I didn’t tell you. And that. Well, I mean, I can’t change what I am, but—”

“Oh, fuck,” Sharpy says, “fuck, Peeks,” and then he’s getting out of his chair, and coming around the table, and pulling Patrick into a hug.

Patrick goes stiff, completely taken aback. But then—Sharpy’s hugging him, hard, like he doesn’t care. Like he knows what Patrick is and still isn’t afraid to touch him.

There’s a lump in Patrick’s throat suddenly, and he’s glad Sharpy can’t see his face, because he’s not sure what his eyes are doing. He brings his arms up to hug Sharpy in return. Keeps it loose, so that Sharpy can pull away if he wants to. But Sharpy doesn’t: just holds on, hugging him and making it harder and harder for Patrick to breathe through the tightness in his throat.

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Sharpy says, pulling back but keeping Patrick within arm’s length, hands on his shoulders. “I don’t care what kind of crap you hear from the world. You’re team, all right? And more than that, you’re Peeks. There’s nothing you could be that would make me think any less of you.”

Patrick nods, and now Sharpy can see his face, which is disastrous because he’s pretty sure his eyes aren’t fit to be seen right now. “Practicing to be a dad?” he asks.

Sharpy moves one hand to cuff him on the head. “Oh, fuck you, I’m trying to have a moment here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Patrick says, and Sharpy finally moves away, thank God, so Patrick can dry his eyes in peace.

***

So that…was okay. Patrick still feels shaky for the rest of the evening, which is not helpful when folding paper cranes, but Sharpy makes it easier by chirping him for his abysmal crane-folding and just generally being Sharpy and normal and making it not seem like a big deal at all.

Jonny’s practically vibrating when Patrick gets home that night. “So? How’d he take it?”

“You don’t have to kill him,” Patrick says, and keeps walking until he bumps up against Jonny and gets folded into his arms.

“So,” Jonny says into his hair, “good?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, “yeah, it was good,” and he pulls back from the hug just in time to see the expression of relief on Jonny’s face. “Hey, weren’t you the one telling me he’d definitely be okay with it?”

Jonny makes a face. “Doesn’t mean I still wouldn’t have killed him if I’d been wrong,” he says, and Patrick grins and snuggles back into his shoulder.

***

Patrick’s had the touch starvation thing under control for a while now. Being with Jonny takes care of it pretty automatically: they never manage to go much more than a day without having sex, and even when they aren’t having sex, Jonny touches him all the time. Arms around him on the couch, in the kitchen, in bed at night; hands brushing his sides as Jonny walks by, kisses dropped on the back of his neck. So it’s never a problem anymore.

Until it is.

He’s at Target, trying to decide which Captain America figurine to send to Jackie to make fun of her ironic-but-not-really-ironic obsession with Chris Evans, when it hits him. Kind of an itch in his gut, like maybe he’s hungry, but it’s not quite that. It’s not quite like being horny, either. It’s more like a strain throughout his entire body, a yearning, a—

He knows this feeling.

He leans against a rack of colored sweatshirts and tries to think clearly, because the pull in his gut is making his thoughts skitter all over the place. It’s not bad, like it was the time he broke down in a hotel room and Jonny had to bring him back from the edge, but that had been building up for months. This is so sudden, and—and he slept in Jonny’s arms all night last night. It doesn’t make any sense that he would need touch this badly.

It’s probably just a weird blip, low blood sugar or whatever. He eats the half a Power Bar he has in his pocket and keeps on shopping. But he keeps having to stop and breathe slowly, trying to fight this feeling back, and finally he pulls out his phone.

Jonny answers right away. “Hey.”

Even hearing Jonny’s voice over the phone soothes something in Patrick’s chest. And at the same time makes him want him more, a sharp pulse of need, almost edging into pain. “You at home?”

Patrick can practically hear Jonny’s attention sharpening. “I can be. What’s up?”

“It’s nothing. Just…” Patrick realizes he has his free arm wrapped around himself, and that when he loosens his grip his hand isn’t steady. “I know it’s weird, but I just, um, need you to touch me a little bit.”

Jonny’s voice goes soft immediately. “It’s not weird.”

It is, though. Patrick knows it’s weird. This isn’t even a normal wolf thing: going touch starved after, like, four hours. “I’ll be at yours in fifteen?” he says. That’s where they’ve been staying, pretty much ever since Jonny’s family left, so he shouldn’t have to clarify, but the edge of anxiety in his body makes him do it anyway.

“I’ll be there,” Jonny says, and Patrick hangs up and spends a moment in the aisle just breathing before he gets the hell out of there.

He thinks about calling a cab, but that just seems stupid, and he’s not shaking that badly. He’s not going to go into full starvation mode on the way to Jonny’s condo. And he doesn’t—but he’s breathing deeply by the time he gets there, whole body jittering as he stumbles out of the car.

The elevator ride is fucking torture. Patrick can’t quite see straight, is a little lightheaded, in that state where he’s just _holding on_ because he knows relief is coming. It’s a stupid-ass state to get into, because if the finish line isn’t where he thinks it is—if Jonny’s not home yet—it’s going to be all the harder to keep going after. He tries to walk himself back from it, tell himself that it could be five more minutes, or ten, until he gets to touch Jonny, but he doesn’t have all that much success. His body is aching for it, fine tremors all up and down his limbs.

Jonny’s face on the other side of his door is the best thing Patrick’s ever seen.

Jonny pulls him inside and runs a hand down his side to his waist. Patrick shudders at the touch, muscles starting to unclench. Jonny pulls him in, tight, close, and Patrick sags against him, letting Jonny take all his weight and soaking up the touch.

They stand like that for a long, blessed minute, and then Jonny walks them over to the couch and lies on his side and holds Patrick close, arms and legs wrapping around him. Patrick finds his mouth and gives him an urgent kiss, one, two, and then turns his face into Jonny’s neck and lets it all wash over him.

It’s like sinking into a warm bath on a freezing day. It’s—it’s wanting something so badly and finding out that the thing you want does exist, that it’s just as good as you thought it was, that it’s actually enough to make you okay. It’s Jonny, holding him like otherwise his body might fall apart.

Jonny breathes on his temple, and his hand comes up to brush the nape of Patrick’s neck. That feels really good, even better than the rest, and so Patrick says, “Skin,” and then they’re pulling off their shirts and pants and nuzzling back in together.

It’s just so good. Acres of Jonny’s skin against his, and Patrick soaks it in like a plant drinking sunshine. He can feel himself transforming, the need dissolving bit by bit.

Jonny’s cock is half-hard against his thigh. They’ll probably end up having sex after this, but that isn’t even what Patrick wants right now. That would distract from how good this feels. His body has work to do, and it’s doing it by feeling the slow rise and fall of Jonny’s chest against his own, the soft brush of Jonny’s breath on his skin. The firm hold of Jonny’s hands and arms and legs, all around him, keeping him in, keeping him safe.

Patrick doesn’t know how long they lie like that. Maybe a half-hour, maybe an hour. Long enough for him to get sleepy, long enough for it to start to change. For the heat of Jonny’s touch to start to pool in his groin, for his breathing to quicken and his hips to shift a little against Jonny’s.

“Yeah?” Jonny asks, voice wry. “Now?”

“What, you don’t want to?” Patrick asks, because he can feel Jonny’s cock hardening against him and smell his scent beginning to shift.

Jonny leans his head over and nips at Patrick’s neck. “I mean, it’ll be a hardship,” he says, but he’s already reaching for the condoms they keep in the end table.

Later, when Jonny’s fucked into him long and hard, and Jonny’s sweat-damp and come-drenched and lying on top of him while Patrick traces the lines of his face and wonders how anyone can be so perfect, Jonny says, “So what do you think that was?”

Patrick stills his finger on the corner of Jonny’s mouth. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’d say it was heat, but it wasn’t really about sex.” He hasn’t gone into heat since last summer, heat suppressants and (very) regular sex doing their jobs, and anyway this was nothing like that. The sex at the end was great, but not what he was after.

“Yeah, seems like no,” Jonny says. “What if it happens again?”

Patrick runs his thumb over Jonny’s lips. “I guess you’ll just have to touch me lots extra, just in case.”

“What a difficult life I lead,” Jonny says, and sucks Patrick’s thumb into his mouth.

***

Things get less busy as June turns into July and the Cup celebrations fade, but that means the outside world starts pulling on them a little more, and Sharpy starts tearing his hair out over the wedding.

“No, really,” he says to Patrick and Jonny when he has them over for brunch. “I found a clump of it in the shower. I think I’m going bald.” His eyes are kind of wide, like this is the worst thing he can imagine, which, probably.

“Don’t you think maybe you just hadn’t cleaned the shower drain in a while?” Patrick says.

Sharpy cocks his head, and his eyes go back to normal. “Oh. You make a good point.”

“What do you even have to do for the wedding, anyway?” Jonny asks. “Isn’t Abby doing most of it?”

Sharpy points his fork at him. “Excuse you, Jonathan, but marriage is a partnership.” He shakes his head. “I feel bad for Peeksy, ending up with you with an attitude like that. Are you going to make _him_ plan the wedding alone?”

Patrick watches as Jonny’s face goes through about fifteen different shades of red as he tries to decide whether he’s more horrified or embarrassed or furious. Patrick just wants to laugh, because God, Patrick is definitely not the one doing the greater share of the work in this relationship.

“Don’t worry, I’ll let him invite some of the guests,” Patrick says, patting Jonny on the arm, and Jonny turns his glare on him. Patrick just beams back at him.

“Sometimes I don’t know why I bother, honestly,” Jonny grumbles, and Patrick laces their fingers together. Jonny squeezes his hand.

They both have to meet with sponsors and do promos, and they manage to arrange for most of them to happen in Chicago. Patrick’s going to have to travel a bit in August, but Jonny’s doing most of his stuff now, which means they can probably travel together.

It also means Patrick has a lot of free time at the moment, which he mostly spends working out and getting shanghaied by Sharpy. Which is great except:

“So, I want to hear all about wolf stuff,” Sharpy says while they’re shopping for pocket squares (which, what the fuck), and—Patrick doesn’t know what to say.

It’s not like he doesn’t want to talk about wolf stuff. Except, yes, it’s exactly like he doesn’t want to talk about wolf stuff. He looks up from the display of reds and auburns to find Sharpy looking at him.

“Like, you don’t have to,” Sharpy says. “But I’m getting the sense there’s a lot I don’t know. Maybe stuff I’ve been misinformed about.”

Patrick doesn’t really wish he hadn’t told Sharpy, but he definitely wishes he weren’t having this conversation. “Like what?”

“Like, do wolves really attack people in wolf form?” Sharpy asks.

Patrick can feel his eyes go wide. “Jesus! No!”

“There, you see?” Sharpy says. “I told you I’ve been fed lies.”

Patrick breathes for a minute. He doesn’t even know where to start with that. Doesn’t like the feeling that he has to be the one to tear down the awful things that get said about wolves, the kind of things opposing teams would say to him if they knew. If they even still let him play.

“You really don’t have to tell me anything,” Sharpy says again. “It would be cool to know what it’s been like for you, though. If you want to tell me.”

Patrick considers. That’s a less daunting task. And…it’s Sharpy. He told him for a reason.

“It’s been pretty crappy,” he says. “Not being able to tell anyone. I kind of thought that…well, I thought you guys would hate me.”

“We’re not that dumb,” Sharpy says. “But I see where you were coming from.”

Patrick nods. He’s still sort of surprised that Sharpy _doesn’t_ hate him.

“Are you going to tell the rest of the guys?” Sharpy asks.

Patrick feels his heart speed up, panic even at the thought. “No,” he says. “Maybe one or two. Maybe…I don’t know.”

“No worries,” Sharpy says easily. “Let me know if you need backup when you do.”

“Thanks,” Patrick says, and turns back to the pocket squares, because a debate about nearly identical shades of red sounds like a nice contrast at this point.

***

The last week and a half before the wedding are the craziest, even for Patrick, who isn’t actually the official best man (and definitely not the maid of honor, no matter what Sharpy says). But Abby’s siblings all live out of town, and Sharpy’s brother Chris is in Calgary, so Patrick finds himself with a surprisingly long list of things he’s suddenly in charge of.

Which would be fine, if Jonny didn’t suddenly have to make a trip to Winnipeg.

“I’m trying to get out of it,” Jonny says. Patrick can tell he is: his hair has that sticking-up look it gets when Jonny’s been pulling on it, trying to figure something out, and he’s giving his laptop the crazy eyes.

“It’s just, this is the only time they can do it this summer,” Jonny says. “I’m trying to reschedule for August, but that doesn’t work with their production schedule or something.”

He’s sitting on the couch, and Patrick moves around behind him and wraps his arms around his shoulders. He can feel Jonny relax, just a little bit. It’s the way touch works on both of them, in the bond.

“It’s okay,” Patrick says. “It’s only for a week.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, because they both know that a week isn’t something to be lightly dismissed. Patrick hasn’t had an episode like he did the other week, where he suddenly needed touch badly, but he still kind of needs it more than usual. He keeps finding himself sidling up to Jonny throughout the day, putting his arms around him not for the simple pleasure of it but because something in him needs it.

“You could come with me,” Jonny says. “My parents would love to have you.”

“Sharpy would straight-up murder me,” Patrick says.

“He’s a millionaire. He can hire someone else to take care of stuff,” Jonny says.

“I don’t think you’ve ever been married,” Patrick says. And that isn’t the point, really. If he had to, if he absolutely had to go away for a week, he could do it, and Sharpy would understand. But: “I don’t want to be the reason you can’t do stuff.”

Jonny slides a hand up to cover Patrick’s. “It’s not like that,” he says. “It’s about me, too.”

Patrick knows that that’s true. It hurts Jonny just as much as it hurts Patrick when Patrick needs something Jonny can’t give him, and Jonny needs Patrick, too. Emotionally, if less biologically insistently.

But he also knows that if Jonny were dating a human, him going away for a week would be no problem at all.

“You should go,” he says. “I’ll be fine.” And Jonny tightens his hand on Patrick’s, like he’s trying to believe him.

Patrick’s trying to do the same thing.

***

In the end, Jonny decides to go, but he appoints interim measures.

“This is ridiculous,” Patrick says, but no one’s paying attention to him. Jonny’s busy giving Sharpy his best laser eyes, and Sharpy’s looking back in amusement.

“So you’re telling me I need to cuddle Kaner while you’re gone,” Sharpy says.

“Yes,” Jonny says firmly. “He needs touch.”

Sharpy’s lips press together in the worst-suppressed smirk Patrick’s ever seen. “So you want me to…touch him.”

“Right,” Jonny says. Then, maybe because he sees the way Sharpy’s smirk is growing, _“Platonically,”_ voice going sharp.

Sharpy rolls his eyes. “Oh no, Jonny, don’t be like that, _please_ can I have sex with Peeks?” He cuts off and makes a face. “Okay, I regret even having to listen to those words together.”

Patrick kicks him. “Please, you’d be lucky to have me.”

Jonny glares at both of them. “Can we all stop talking about Patrick having sex with other people now?”

“Yes, yes, fine,” Sharpy says. “I will platonically cuddle Patrick all his heart desires.”

“Don’t do me any favors,” Patrick says.

“Me,” Jonny says. “He’s doing me a favor.” And he fixes Patrick with a look that makes Patrick wish, suddenly, that he weren’t going—even though he knows the reasons it’s important, even though he wants to prove to himself he can do this. But he suddenly wishes, badly, for a week spent in Jonny’s arms instead.

“Ew,” Sharpy says. “I don’t have to look at him like that, do I?”

Jonny glares some more. “Maybe we can fly one of your sisters in.”

“No, no, I’ll do it,” Sharpy says. “I’ll have him running around doing wedding stuff anyway. Shouldn’t be too difficult to slip in a few cuddles.”

“Yippee,” Patrick drawls, but he feels a little warm inside anyway: that Jonny is setting this up, that Sharpy cares enough about him to agree. That even when Jonny’s gone, he won’t be alone.

***

Of course, he’s not living with the soon-to-be-Sharps, so he does do a lot more stuff alone after Jonny leaves.

Mostly he’s working out. He’s way behind where he wants to be at this point in the summer—understandably, since winning the Cup meant they were all pretty busy until the middle of June, and then there were all the celebrations. He needed to give his body a rest after the playoffs, anyway. But now is the time to buckle down.

It would be better with Jonny there. Patrick feels kind of lethargic with him gone, like he took a bunch of Patrick’s energy with him. Which is unfortunate, given that he’s trying to work out and also run around doing Sharpy’s annoying wedding things.

“Can you run to the florist on your way over?” Sharpy says when he calls Patrick on Sunday afternoon. “The orchids or whatever have come in, and they refuse to send us pictures of them.”

“Sure,” Patrick says. He’s on his last mile of a stationary bike ride, and he’s having to push way harder than he normally would. It’s annoying. “While I’m out, want me to swing by a temp agency and pick you up a personal assistant?”

“Har har,” Sharpy says. “And shower first. We’ve scheduled some cuddling time into the afternoon.”

It’s kind of awkward to be scheduled in like that, but it does mean he has something to send back when Jonny sends him one of his dozens of checking-in texts.

It’s also not that bad, when he settles into the couch with Sharpy and Abby to watch some kind of wedding design reality show that he didn’t even know existed. He doesn’t know what Sharpy’s told Abby, but she’s pretty great as people go, and at any rate she’s polite enough not to say anything if she thinks it’s weird that her fiancé’s teammate is sandwiched between them on the couch.

So it’s not bad, for about the first fifteen minutes. And then Patrick starts to hyperventilate.

He’s not sure what it is. He’s leaning against Sharpy, Sharpy’s arm around his shoulder, and Abby’s tucked into his side, and it’s _nice._ Except for the crawling feeling that’s growing all over his skin, and the way his pulse is leaping up in panicky jolts, and he feels like the walls of the living room are too close. Sharpy’s and Abby’s bodies feel like foreign objects digging into him.

This is wrong. He shouldn’t be…not while Jonny’s…this is _wrong._

He leaps up from between them, and both Sharpy and Abby start at the sudden motion. “I’ll be right back,” he says. “I have to…make a phone call.”

He takes his phone into one of the guest rooms and dials Jonny’s number with shaky hands. His skin is still crawling, and he feels like he’s not far away enough.

Jonny answers after two rings. “Hello?”

“Hey,” Patrick says, and then realizes he doesn’t have anything to say, really. “I, um, just wanted to hear your voice.”

“Yeah?” Patrick can hear the smile in his voice. “Having fun bridesmaiding?”

“Shut up, I am not a bridesmaid,” Patrick says, and lies down on the guest bed. It feels good just to have Jonny on the other end of the line. Not enough, but good.

Jonny has to go after a couple of minutes—he’s in the middle of a shoot, apparently. Patrick realizes that Jonny probably made them stop in the middle of something so he could take the call, and he feels guilty. He needs this to not be a problem going forward.

“Hey,” he says before Jonny can go. “Will you, um. Tell me to cuddle with Sharpy and Abby?”

There’s a pause on the other end of the line. That’s not something they usually do: Jonny giving Patrick orders. Except sometimes during sex. Never like this. “Is everything okay?” Jonny asks.

Patrick empties his lungs. “It feels wrong,” he says. “It feels…like it should be you.”

“It _should_ be me,” Jonny says, but he doesn’t say the rest of what Patrick knows: that Patrick loves cuddling with other teammates also, has never had a problem with piles of bodies that aren’t Jonny’s.

Maybe it’s just because Jonny’s not there. But it feels weird.

“I just,” he says, “I think it’ll help.”

“Okay,” Jonny says, sounding kind of soft. “Go cuddle with Sharpy and Abby.”

“Okay,” Patrick says, and he doesn’t know if it’ll work—it’s not like the alpha’s word is some law he can’t disobey or anything. But this is a wolf thing, and maybe this way the wolf will get the message that this is what Jonny wants.

It does seem to help, a bit. He goes back to the couch and lets Sharpy and Abby make room for him again, and ignores their curious looks, and does feel a little better for the rest of the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The discussion of abortion tag comes into play in this chapter. Please see the (spoilery) end notes if you'd like to know more.

A few days later, Patrick’s feeling much worse. He wakes up and runs to the bathroom and barely makes it in front of the toilet before he’s throwing up.

He leans back and wipes his mouth off as he waits for his stomach to uncramp. Jesus. That’s never been part of touch deprivation before.

It’s possible he’s just getting sick, and that’s what’s been making the touch thing weird, too. He doesn’t even feel touch-deprived at the moment—just kind of shaky from throwing up.

_Sick,_ he texts to Jonny, and gets a string of sad faces in response.

_Do you want me to come back?_ Jonny sends.

_No, it’s fine,_ Patrick texts back, because even though he does want that, of course he does, he doesn’t want it any more than he did yesterday or the day before. _Not a big deal._

_Would make you feel better if I were there,_ Jonny says.

_I know,_ Patrick says, and adds some hearts, because they are actually just as sickening as Sharpy says.

He’s hungry, so he has some toast, and then he’s feeling normal enough that he goes to work out. His speed and stamina are for shit, but then, he’s sick. He’s pretty sure exercise is supposed to be good for sick people, though.

Actually, he might be making that up. He texts Jonny, _Exercise is good for sick people right?_

_GO TAKE A NAP,_ Jonny sends back.

Patrick laughs, but he’s feeling pretty good by then, so he goes off to meet Abby at the bridal shop.

“I’d better get some awesome bridal party perks for this,” he says, while he holds a scrap of fabric that is probably supposed to match something. He’s pretty sure this was supposed to be Sharpy’s job, before he developed an “emergency” tux fitting.

“I’ll make sure you get invited to the tea party,” Abby says. “What do you think of this pink?”

“It’s pink,” Patrick says.

Abby looks at him for a second. “Right,” she says, and her eyes sparkle in a grin. “You’re going to like this next part much better.”

The next part, apparently, is lingerie. “Okay, I can get on board with this,” Patrick says.

“Telling Jonny you said that,” she calls out from deep within a pile of wispy lace thingies.

Patrick may not currently be sleeping with women, or have any intention of doing so ever again, but that doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate some wispy lingerie. Or—well, at least he could, if it weren’t for the sudden stabbing pain in his abdomen.

“Ow,” he says, and leans against the wall.

Abby is out of the racks of wispy things like a shot (or maybe like the trained nurse she is). “What? Are you okay?”

“Um,” he says, and it’s not as bad as the pain from a bad hit on the ice, but it also doesn’t fade in the same way, and he’d be really okay with it going away any minute now. “Yeah. Stomach.”

“What kind of pain?” Her eyes are raking over him, and now her fingers are working efficiently down his abdomen. “Does it feel better when I press there?”

“No. What?” It just feels like fingers are digging into his abdomen, which doesn’t help.

“Probably not the appendix, then.” She takes her fingers away. “Does it feel like it could be cramping?”

“Yeah. Maybe.” How is he supposed to know? But it is kind of muscle-crampy, he guesses, and he was throwing up this morning.

“Do you think it’s the touch thing?” she asks, and he does a double take.

She’s looking at him coolly, sort of professionally, but he can tell she knows. That what she’s asking is significant. “Sharpy told you?”

She nods, and her hand slips into his and squeezes. He squeezes back and bites his lip. He’d assumed, but it’s different to know. To know she knows and is still here, holding his hand.

“I know not to tell anyone,” she says.

“Thanks,” he says, and his heart is beating a little too fast, but at least the cramp seems to be lessening. She’s still holding his hand, though, and the moment is starting to feel too weighty. “Um, this isn’t your wedding night lingerie I’m supposed to be picking or anything, is it?”

She grins and makes him sit down while she tries on negligees.

***

Patrick feels okay for the rest of the day, if weirdly tired. Jonny texts him a little while after the thing in the store. _Think I’m getting what you have,_ he says. _Weird stomach cramps._

_I know, right?_ Patrick texts back, and it sucks being sick the week of Sharpy’s wedding, but at least it’s nothing totally debilitating. He hopes it doesn’t mess with Jonny’s shoot.

He talks to Jackie for a while that night, because he doesn’t want to impose on Abby and Sharpy too much, but he really does hate being home alone. He got so used to always having Jonny around this year.

“That’s ’cause you’re in looooove,” Jackie croons at him over the phone, and Patrick makes a face.

“Like you aren’t,” he says, because she and Cody were basically sickening last summer.

“We’re on a break,” she says, matter-of-fact, and Patrick’s really glad this isn’t Skype, suddenly.

“W-what?” he says, because—okay, he wasn’t thrilled with the idea of his sister dating someone seriously at sixteen, but they had—they had been really happy, and—

“Some of his friends were jerks about the wolf thing,” she says, and Patrick sits down heavily on the couch.

“Oh my God, Jacks,” he says. “But he was so good about it.” It was one of the reasons he was able to get on board with some teenage boy cuddling with his sister: that he was so good with the cuddles. With the wolf piles. With everything, really.

“Yeah,” she says, “but I need someone who’ll stand up for me in public, not just in private.”

“That’s…wow.” Patrick’s skin is crawling. He draws his knees up to his chest. “That’s awful.”

“It’s okay,” she says, and he doesn’t get it, how she can sound so okay with it. If it were him and Jonny…

“I want you to know I’m giving you, like, a million virtual hugs right now,” he says.

She laughs a little. “Thanks. I’ll come collect on those soon.”

“Come whenever you want,” he says. “Seriously.” He’ll pay for plane tickets anytime it’ll get his sisters here. Especially after they’ve just been betrayed by scumbag boyfriends.

When he’s off the phone, Patrick leaves his knees pulled up and lets himself tip over onto the couch. It got dark while he was on the phone with Jackie, and none of the lights are on in the living room. It’s just him and the darkness.

He calls Jonny. “Hey, Patrick,” Jonny says, and his voice is a little sleepy, like maybe he’s been lying around reading or something.

“What would you do,” Patrick asks, “if I told some of the team about me and they weren’t okay with it?”

There’s a short pause. “I’m just trying to decide how much violence I could do and not go to jail,” Jonny says.

Patrick laughs. He doesn’t really think Jonny’s serious, but he also knows he is, a little. That he’d at least _want_ to do terrible things to them.

“I’d never let them hurt you,” Jonny says quietly.

“I know.” Patrick wraps his arm around himself. It’s not touch hunger this time—just the normal, human feeling in his chest of wanting Jonny there with him. “I miss you.”

Jonny gives a gusty sigh into the phone. “God, I miss you so fucking much.”

“Yeah?” Patrick says.

“I keep, um.” There’s a little hint of a shy smile in his voice. “I keep getting distracted, thinking about what you’d be doing or saying if you were here. I think they think I have some kind of attention problem.”

Patrick laughs. “Hey, at least you were never normal, so they can’t be expecting that, right?”

Jonny makes a little rumbly sound. “If you were here. Bite you so hard for that.”

“Yeah?” Patrick lets his legs straighten out on the couch. “Where?” he asks, and the call is very different after that.

***

Patrick feels great when he goes to bed, and then when he wakes up he has to run for the toilet again to avoid throwing up on the floor.

“What the fucking hell,” he mutters, falling back and making a face at the taste in his mouth.

***

He feels sort of okay for the rest of the day, if a little sluggish, and he actually manages to enjoy cuddling with Sharpy and Abby before Abby leaves for her flight to Providence with some of her bridesmaids (the real ones). Even if Sharpy does make him look at photos of the centerpieces after that and also manages to get in like six separate jabs about how much better his mile time was on the treadmill that morning than Patrick’s.

Then the next morning he’s sprinting for the bathroom again. They’re flying to Providence that day, him and Sharpy, and that’s what he thinks about when he’s bending over the toilet, retching—what if he’s not well enough to go? He’s supposed to meet Jonny there, and if he can’t go, he can’t exactly ask Jonny to leave Sharpy’s wedding and come back to Chicago to be with him. That would be okay—Patrick can survive a few more days without seeing him. It just…would suck, is all.

By the time he’s washed his mouth out and has pulled on some clothing, though, he’s feeling better. Better enough that he doesn’t say anything to Sharpy when he calls to confirm when they’re getting to the airport. He still feels fine as he and Sharpy navigate check-in and security and go through the gate—right up to when the plane takes off.

As soon as they start accelerating down the runway, Patrick’s stomach turns over and his skin flushes hot and his joints get week. Oh, no.

He keeps it together until the seatbelt sign goes off: pulls off his sweatshirt, turns the little air vent on himself, takes slow breaths, tries to ignore the way Sharpy keeps giving him weird looks. Then finally the little light dings off and he lurches out of his seat, scrambles over Sharpy, and bolts down the aisle towards the bathroom.

Thank god it’s empty. It’s all he can do to slam the door lock and lift the toilet seat before he’s on his knees, retching his breakfast into the scary dark bowels of the airplane bathroom.

It’s a couple of minutes before he stops heaving, even after nothing’s coming up. Then he kneels on trembling legs and pants over the toilet and thinks, _What the fucking crap?_

He’s flown a million times. It’s actually a major part of his job, getting on random airplanes and crisscrossing the country. He’s never gotten airsick before. Even on last year’s epic flight to Denver, when they hit massive turbulence and half the team was groaning over barf bags, Patrick’s stomach was fine. And maybe he’s sick, sure—but why doesn’t he feel sick the rest of the time? Why is it only mornings and—

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh fucking _no._

***

Patrick doesn’t know how long he’s in there before the door rattles. “Kaner,” Sharpy’s voice says through the door. “Uh, hate to bother you, but Tazer lectured me for like twelve hours about how if anything happens to you while he’s gone, he’s going to get Abby to help him dispose of the body, and I’m pretty sure she’d do it, so I don’t really want to let you die in an airplane bathroom. So, uh, how ya doin’ in there?”

Patrick is breathing. That’s how he’s doing. He’s breathing, and he’s not thinking, and he’s not moving. He’s digging his fingers into the edge of the toilet console and he is fucking _breathing_.

“Okay, and now there’s a flight attendant staring at me,” Sharpy says. The door jiggles. “Oh, and I think she recognized me, so unless you want an article on Deadspin about how the soon-to-be-wed Patrick Sharp invades airplane bathrooms to rescue his probably-dead friends—”

Patrick manages to get his hand on the door lock. He uses it to pull himself up, and then he slides it open.

Sharpy stops talking in the middle of a sentence. His face changes. “Holy shit,” he says. “Are you okay?”

“Sick,” Patrick says. He is. He feels like his stomach is collapsing in on itself.

“Fuck, okay, let’s get you sitting down.” Sharpy tries to put an arm around him, and Patrick flinches away. He stumbles into the side of a seat. He can’t—

“Ooookay.” Sharpy takes his arm, and this time Patrick doesn’t fight it. “Let’s focus on getting you back to your seat alive.”

Their row doesn’t even look familiar. Patrick lets himself be pushed into the seat, and he wants to—wants to curl up, or something, or get up again, or run away, because—

“Shit, you really aren’t okay, are you?” Sharpy says.

Patrick realizes he’s shaking. Just a little, hands and arms and legs. He presses his hands to his knees.

“No,” he whispers.

“What the fuck is going on?” Sharpy asks.

Patrick opens his mouth to tell him. He—the air stops coming, his chest and throat seizing up. Panic digs in, sharp and bright. He—

“Okay, okay, fuck, breathe, Peeks, breathe.” Sharpy’s hands are on him. Patrick doesn’t want them there, but he can’t _breathe,_ can’t get air. He hears a wheezing gasping sound and realizes it’s him, no air, no air…

“In and out. In and out. Do you—okay, maybe you don’t want me touching you right now. Just—breathe with me. In and out, nice and slow…”

Sharpy’s hands are off him. Patrick listens to the rhythm of his voice and tries to get air into his lungs. It’s a little easier now: it’s still tight but less so, and the red is retreating from his vision. He gulps at the oxygen, great hacking breaths that make him sound like he’s sobbing.

“Yeah, that’s it.” Sharpy’s hands are on the armrest. That’s good: Patrick doesn’t want them on him. The shudders are back, and he needs something good. Needs—

“Jonny,” he whispers.

“We’ll see him in just a couple of hours,” Sharpy says. “A couple of hours, Kaner, you got it?”

Fuck. It’s getting hard to breathe again.

***

The flight lasts forever. When they finally get to deplane, Patrick feels numb, clumsy. Sharpy has to herd him into the aisle and hand him a bag to carry. Then the bag collides with something, and it’s gone from his hand. He stumbles after the crowd of people and knows people are staring at the brainless idiot.

It’s good, though. It’s better. He doesn’t want to have a brain. If he has a brain, he’ll have to think—

The ground slopes up in the tunnel out of the plane. Patrick trips a few times on the carpet, stumbles into Sharpy, and then he gets to the gate and sees—

Jonny.

Patrick’s whole body goes loose at the sight. Jonny’s standing tense, wild-eyed, scanning the crowd, and as soon as his gaze locks with Patrick he starts forward. Patrick wants to go to him—wants to run—but there’s a wave of something starting in his head, knowledge trickling back in and he can’t hide from it anymore, can’t hold it back. He—

“Jonny,” he says, and Jonny’s hands are on him, holding his arms. Holding him up. “Jonny, I’m sorry.”

“Are you okay?” Jonny asks.

Patrick shakes his head. He feels his face crumpling. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Sharpy said you were sick,” Jonny says, sounding confused, and Patrick just shakes his head again. Jonny’s hands are still on his arms, but it’s not enough. He wants Jonny’s arms all the way around him. He knows they can’t do that, not here, but he wants it.

“Sorry,” he whispers again. “Jonny, I’m sorry.” Maybe if he’s sorry enough, Jonny will—

“We have to get him out of here,” Jonny says over his shoulder—oh, to Sharpy, Sharpy, who’s standing behind them. Patrick doesn’t care about that right now, though. He cares about Jonny’s hands tightening on his arms, and the way Jonny smells, familiar and secure and still not enough.

“Do you have a car?” Sharpy asks, and then there are a few moments of Jonny giving Sharpy keys and instructions. Patrick’s focusing on not pressing himself forward to bury his face in Jonny’s throat. People would see, and he doesn’t want that. It’s bad enough—

_—bad enough bad enough bad enough—_

“Patrick, baby,” Jonny’s saying into his ear. “You’re gonna walk with me, okay? It’ll be okay. We’re gonna get you somewhere safe.”

Patrick grits his teeth and nods. Jonny’s arm is around his shoulder now, and he can focus on that, doesn’t have to think about anything else. Except that his stomach hurts, and he tries to think of something else, tries to focus on Jonny next to him, but his stomach is cramping at him and he just can’t—

“Hey, did I tell you how awful I was in my shoot?” Jonny says, voice low and close. “Like, really sucky. You would have laughed at me so much.”

Patrick nods, and then shakes his head, because he can’t quite remember the question. There’s an achy fog in his head, centering on the point between his eyebrows.

“They kept trying to make me say this line, about, like, working out or something, and I couldn’t remember the words,” Jonny says. “And I kept imagining you there, telling me not to use such a monotone—”

Patrick lets his mouth crack into a smile. It doesn’t touch the rest of him, the ( _worst thing worst thing_ ) chaos under his skin, but it makes it a little easier to walk in a straight line.

“That’s it, almost to the baggage claim,” Jonny says. His voice is monotone, always is, and Patrick loves it, holds onto it. “Just a little bit longer, and then we’ll be outside, in the car with Sharpy.”

No. That’s—that’s not good. Once they’re outside, Patrick will have to tell him.

Jonny must feel Patrick’s body seize up, because his arm gets firmer around Patrick’s shoulders. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” He lets his head tip against Patrick’s for just a second, forehead against Patrick’s hair, and it’s risky, but Patrick drinks it up. Doesn’t know how much longer he’ll get touches like that, if he tells and—

“Outside now,” Jonny says, and every step feels like Patrick’s pulling himself forward against an irresistible force. He doesn’t want to stay in the airport, not really, but every step outside of it brings him closer to the thing he really doesn’t want, the thing that could ruin everything.

He just wants to be in Jonny’s arms again.

“So soon, baby, so soon,” Jonny says, and then there’s a car in front of him and Jonny’s tugging him forward, and the car has tinted windows, Patrick notices, and Jonny opens the door to the backseat and follows him in and then oh, oh, Jonny’s arms are around him and _finally, finally._

His breath leaves him in a sob as he pushes himself against Jonny’s neck. Jonny’s hands are anchoring him: firm on his lower back, the back of his neck. “Sh, sh,” Jonny says. “You’re good; I’m here.”

Patrick’s not good. Jonny’s here, but. “Jonny,” he says, and his voice sounds broken and small to his own ears. “Jonny.”

“It’s okay.” Jonny gathers him more tightly in his arms and presses his lips to Patrick’s temple. He works one hand up the back of Patrick’s shirt. “I won’t let you go.”

Patrick shakes his head, because he knows, now, what Jonny thinks this is. It would be easier, but—it’s not. “It’s not—that.”

Jonny’s hand doesn’t move from where it’s pressing against Patrick’s lower back, skin on skin. Patrick soaks up the grounding touch. “What is it?”

“It’s.” Patrick buries his face in Jonny’s collarbone. “On the plane, I.” God, how can he say it? He can’t say it.

“Did something happen?” Jonny’s voice sounds a little farther away, and Patrick realizes he’s looking up, toward the front seat, where Sharpy must be sitting. The car is moving, and Patrick didn’t even notice: he was too focused on Jonny’s arms around him at last. He wants to stay right here, pressed against Jonny’s body forever. Not say anything that might make it all fall apart.

“No,” he says against Jonny’s skin. Nothing happened. 

Jonny’s hand strokes up his spine, little brushes of his fingers. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I promise it’ll be okay.”

Patrick chokes out a laugh. The last thing it’ll ever be is okay. It’s so far from okay it might as well be playing in the KHL. “You don’t want to hear it. You’ll—”

“I want to hear anything,” he says into Patrick’s ear. “Anything, okay?”

Patrick concentrates on the press of Jonny’s hand to his back, the soft touch of his breath on the shell of his ear. He feels himself take a step outside himself, like he did when he told Sharpy he was a wolf. He can get through this, as long as he isn’t here for it. He won’t die.

He brings his lips up to Jonny’s ear, breathes in a lungful of his scent, and closes his eyes. “Pregnant,” he whispers.

Jonny’s arms tighten around him convulsively. “Fuck,” Jonny breathes, then, _“Sweetheart.”_

Patrick lets out another sobbing breath. He’s shaking, arms and legs, and his hand is fisted in Jonny’s shirt so hard it aches.

“Fucking hell, I love you so much,” Jonny murmurs, and his lips press hard against Patrick’s temple. Patrick chokes on it, can feel it, the way he can only do very rarely, when it’s really strong: Jonny’s love, coming through the bond. He’s floating in it now, being warmed from the inside, but it’s not right. He has to tell Jonny, because he’s got it all wrong. He doesn’t get it.

“Jonny,” he says. “Jonny. I won’t be able to play hockey.”

He can feel the way Jonny goes still. It comes through the bond, some of it, still open from a moment before: the wave of horror.

Yeah. Jonny gets it now.

“Okay. It’s okay,” Jonny whispers after a moment. “We’ll figure it out. It’s going to be okay.”

Patrick can’t even answer that, because it’s such a lie. There’s no way it’ll be okay. He has a baby growing inside him, and that means he’ll have to tell someone, and then people will know he’s a wolf, they’ll _know,_ and fuck, there’s that feeling again, like he’s getting too much air and not enough at the same time—

“Just hold onto me,” he croaks out, and Jonny does. He shifts them so that Patrick’s pressed up against the back of the seat with Jonny curled around him, holding him in so that none of the pieces of his shaking body can fly away. He pins Patrick’s legs beneath one of his and puts his mouth to Patrick’s neck and bites, oh thank fuck, gets his teeth on the skin so that Patrick knows he’s claimed, knows that Jonny will never let him go. Patrick slaps a hand on the back of Jonny’s head to hold him there. It’s bone-deep, this feeling of belonging, and Patrick can feel it washing away the edges of his panic. He just needs more, needs to fill up, needs Jonny to keep biting him like that—

“Um,” Sharpy says. “I hate to interrupt, but I’ve circled the hotel three times now. Any chance you two will be ready to get out soon?”

Jonny takes his teeth out of Patrick’s neck. Patrick feels dazed. He’s not ready yet. He…

Jonny pulls back far enough to look him in the eye. Patrick’s not sure what he sees there, but whatever it is, it makes Jonny say, “Give us another minute?”

“Sure, sure,” Sharpy says, and Jonny leans in again and sets his teeth around the tendon of Patrick’s neck. Patrick lets his eyes fall shut.

***

They make it to the hotel room, somehow. Patrick still feels lost, but Jonny’s hand is on his elbow, steering him into the elevator and through the corridors. Once they’re in the room with the door shut, he lets himself fall into Jonny’s arms again.

“Hey.” Jonny’s basically holding him up, Patrick’s body slumped against him. “It really will be okay. I promise.”

Patrick doesn’t even bother answering—just lets his face press into Jonny’s shoulder.

Jonny gets them into bed, shuffling sideways across the room and flipping back the covers. It smells like strangers, and it makes Patrick’s wolf itchy. He just wants to be back at Jonny’s place ( _home_ ), where it smells like them. They’re behind a locked door, and Jonny’s pressed up against him, but he can’t—he can’t—

Jonny gets him on his side with his face pressed against Jonny’s chest, and Patrick shudders with each breath. He tries to get his muscles to relax enough to breathe smoothly, but it just gets worse. Jonny eases him through it, hand rubbing circles on Patrick’s back as Patrick chokes on his air and tries to ignore the fact that he’s basically sobbing.

It’s. It’s not that this was the thing he was most afraid of. He hasn’t thought about it enough to be afraid of it. But it’s the thing he would have been most afraid of, if he’d known.

His stomach is pressed up against Jonny’s hips. His stomach, where—

“I don’t get it,” he says. His voice is weak and shaky. “It doesn’t make sense. We always used a condom.”

“I know,” Jonny murmurs against his hair. “I’ve been trying to think, but—oh. Fuck.”

“What?” Patrick’s tired now; he doesn’t have the energy to get upset over anything new, even if Jonny’s found anything to be upset about.

“That one time,” Jonny says. “Coming back from Rockit, the day after the Cup, remember?”

Oh, God. That time. Patrick does remember it: the two of them tumbling into the cab, and Jonny not able to keep from smoothing his hands up Patrick’s thighs, and Patrick so wet by the time they got to Jonny’s condo that he pulled Jonny to him right by the door and they’d fucked against the wall, fast and desperate. He hadn’t even been thinking about a condom, just about getting Jonny’s cock inside him as soon as possible. By the time they came, they weren’t up for anything except tumbling into bed, and the next day was the parade. He was thinking about the team, and the Cup, and Jonny’s face glowing in the sunlight, not about the sweet slide of Jonny’s bare cock in his ass.

The memory makes Patrick flush and his stomach roll over, a sick sort of remembered arousal. “I can’t believe we did that,” he says. “I can’t believe we didn’t think.”

“I’m so sorry.” Jonny presses a kiss to the top of his hair. “Baby. Please forgive me.” As if he’s the one who caused this. As if it’s his body that’s messed up, instead of Pat’s.

“Not you,” he whispers, and his stomach rolls over again, and then he’s pushing out of the bed and running for the bathroom.

It’s a little better throwing up when he’s not alone, having Jonny next to him to rub his back while he throws up and to hand him a glass of water afterwards. But Patrick wishes Jonny didn’t have to see him like this. Wishes he didn’t have to see the evidence of how screwed up Patrick is.

“This is, uh, how I knew,” he says, when things seem to have stopped for the moment, and he’s just hanging weakly over the toilet. “It’s been days. Mostly in the morning, but.”

Jonny smoothes a hand over his forehead, where the hair is sticky with sweat. It feels good, having the cool touch, even though it must be gross for Jonny. “Maybe you’re just sick?” Jonny says. “Maybe it’s the flu or something?”

Patrick shakes his head. He wishes he could think that, but as soon as he thought of the pregnancy thing, he knew it was right. He can feel the weirdness inside his own body. A little bit of difference in his scent. And it explains the sudden touch hunger, and his unease around Sharpy and Abby. His wolf is establishing its pack.

A pack. Fuck, he can’t even think about it that way. Not when this thing is going to—it’s trying to—

“I have to get to a doctor,” he says.

Jonny nods. He’s sitting sideways next to Patrick, one leg stretched out behind Patrick’s back, arm around his shoulder. “Yeah. We should get you checked out. Make sure it’s all okay.”

That…wasn’t what Patrick meant. What he was thinking a doctor could do. But he doesn’t say it. He just leans his head against Jonny’s shoulder.

“Let’s take a nap,” Jonny says softly, and Patrick nods. He’s so tired.

***

Patrick manages to pull himself together in time for them to be just barely not late to the rehearsal dinner. It’s so weird, plastering on a smile and making nice with people in the hotel function room. Patrick keeps having the urge to cover up his stomach. He knows no one can see anything—he spent a long time in front of the bathroom mirror before he got dressed, making sure his stomach was just as flat as it usually is—but he still wants to shield it. Like maybe someone could see through the skin.

At least there are no wolves in the room. They would smell it in a heartbeat.

Sharpy gives them a wide smile as soon as he spots them coming in, but Patrick can see the way his eyes are worried. “How’s the room?” Sharpy asks, and that’s not what he means at all. “Everything you dreamed of?”

“Um,” Patrick says.

“We’re okay,” Jonny says, and it’s absolutely the right thing to say. Even if it’s not at all accurate.

It sucks being in public again, where he can’t touch Jonny anymore. Duncs and Seabs are there, and Patrick must have gotten used to being around Sharpy, because it’s so weird, being around teammates who don’t know they’re together. He keeps starting to reach over and then having to stop, his hand hovering in midair by Jonny’s body.

He thinks Jonny is feeling the same thing, from the way he keeps shifting his cocktail from one hand to the other, like he’s trying to free up his left hand to touch Patrick and then remembering that he can’t do that. It makes Patrick feel both better and worse.

Duncs doesn’t have any qualms about touching Patrick. “Going to the bar,” he says, slapping a hand on Patrick’s back, and Patrick has to hide a wince, because any touch other than Jonny’s feels wrong right now. “Want anything?”

“Um,” Patrick says. “Just seltzer for me.”

Duncs’ eyebrows go up. “Really?”

Patrick puts on a smile that he knows is weak. “Yeah, uh, rough night last night.”

The confusion on Duncs’ face goes away. “Ohhh. I don’t even want to know what Sharpy gets up to the week before he gets married.”

“Heh heh,” Patrick says—like, actually says—and he knows from the look on Seabs’ face that it comes out weird, but Jonny clears his throat.

“So, how do you think convention will go this year?” he asks Seabs, and at least now Patrick can squirm uncomfortably without everyone’s attention on him.

It’s okay, though, until they go into dinner. And then one of Sharpy’s cousins sits down at the table next to theirs, and she’s pregnant.

Patrick flashes cold. She’s…really pregnant. Like, her stomach is a beach ball under her dress. He can’t take his eyes off the curve of it. He puts his hands on his napkin, just to have something to do with them, and then he can’t seem to get to the step beyond that, so he sits there with his hands clenching the stupid folded swan.

It’s just…so round. The guy with her has to help her into her chair, and she can’t quite pull it up to the table. It’s…it’s…

Patrick lets go of the swan and tries to breathe. Jonny’s up, getting another drink or something, and he can’t do this here. Duncs and Seabs haven’t noticed anything yet, he doesn’t think, but if they do—

“Kaner?” Seabs says, and oh fuck, he’s looking. “You okay?”

“Be right back,” Patrick says, and he hops up and walks out as steadily as he can.

The dining room opens onto a patio. Patrick goes outside, into the growing dark, and makes it around the edge of a fancy lattice thingy, and then he grips onto the slats and lets his head drop.

Fuck. Her stomach. Everyone could see it. That—that’s going to be _him._

It’s a couple of minutes before he hears footsteps outside, and he knows it’s Jonny before he rounds the corner. Their bond doesn’t always work like that, but sometimes it does. He’s really glad now is one of those times.

Jonny steps up behind him and circles his waist with his arms and presses a kiss beneath his ear. “You know, we can go if you want,” he says, voice low. “Sharpy would get it. We could pack up and be on the next flight back to Chicago.”

Patrick imagines it, and some part of him leaps at the idea of the freedom. Not having to pretend for anyone. Getting to lock himself inside the condo and not having to see anyone but Jonny. But: Sharpy. Sharpy, who’s been nothing but supportive, and Abby, who cuddled him while Jonny was gone. He wants to be there for them. “No,” he says. “I’ll be okay.”

“Okay,” Jonny says, and they stand there for another minute, just breathing together in the darkness, before they head back inside.

***

After that, the dinner’s okay. Patrick feels numb, but it doesn’t matter: he just has to get through this wedding, and then he can do what he needs to to take care of this. Then everything can be okay.

Jonny doesn’t leave his side again until they go back up to the room. It’s good, and anchoring, and fuck Duncs and Seabs if they notice anything off about it. Patrick needs to have Jonny next to him right now. It makes his wolf sit back calmly; it makes it so much easier to paste a smile on his face when it’s necessary.

Jonny does disappear for a few minutes when dinner is over. He sends Patrick back to the room and tells him he’ll be right up, and when he finally comes through the door, it’s with a bag from CVS.

“I thought you might want to take this,” he says, holding out a bottle to Patrick. “Obviously we still need to talk to a doctor, but.”

Patrick takes the bottle. It’s vitamins: some kind of folic acid and iron thing. It’s pink. “Did you—are these prenatal vitamins?”

“I don’t know if it’s the same for wolves,” Jonny says. His cheeks are a little pink, and he looks nervous, like he’s not sure how Patrick’s going to react. “But I know you were worried, and I figured—”

“Jonny.” Patrick lets his eyes close for a second. Part of him, the wolf part, is basking in Jonny doing this for him, his mate looking out for him right now. But the rest of him just can’t. He didn’t want to do this, not now, but he can’t let Jonny think— “Jonny,” he says again. “I can’t have this baby.”

He’s looking right at Jonny when he says it; otherwise, he would have missed it. The moment in which all of the color drains out of Jonny’s face. Like Jonny’s seen his own grave.

The next moment it’s gone: the horror smoothed over like it was never there. “Of course,” Jonny says. “Yeah, you’re right, of course.”

“Of—oh, fuck you!” Patrick says.

“What?” Jonny says, clearly startled.

“You—Jonny, you—” And then Patrick can’t talk anymore because he has to storm into the bathroom and grab two handfuls of bath towel and grip tight just to keep himself under control.

It’s another minute before he hears Jonny’s footstep in the doorway. It sounds hesitant. “Um,” Jonny says. “Are you okay?”

“No, I am fucking not okay,” Patrick says.

There’s another pause. “Okay,” Jonny says. “Is there anything I can get you, or—”

“I am not fucking okay because I’m standing here in a hotel room in stupid Rhode Island and I’m pregnant and my fucking boyfriend is lying to me about how okay he is with abortion!” Patrick says.

The bathroom is really silent after he says that. Patrick guesses he got a little loud, there.

“I wasn’t— _lying_ to you,” Jonny says.

Patrick grips harder, fingers hurting on the towel. “You fucking were, Jonny.”

“No, I—I wasn’t. I just…for a second, I…”

Jonny trails off, and Patrick isn’t okay with not looking at him for this anymore, so he turns around. Jonny’s standing in the middle of the bathroom floor, looking at him with eyes that are wide and suspiciously wet.

“I just…I freaked out a little bit, for a second, okay,” Jonny says. “But you’re right. You need—you need to play hockey, and this will get in the way of that. It’s the right call.”

Patrick narrows his eyes at him. “So…you’re okay with me getting rid of the baby.”

Jonny nods, but—Patrick knows his face. He is not okay.

“Fuck’s sake, Jonny,” he says. “I need to—I need to _know_ what you _feel_ if I’m going to decide this, I can’t just—”

“Hey, whoa!” Jonny ducks the towel Patrick throws at him. “I didn’t—I’m not trying to lie to you.”

Patrick sags against the empty towel rack. He’s _so_ tired. “But you’re not telling the truth, either.”

“The truth—” Jonny hesitates for a long moment, and Patrick starts to tense up again, but then Jonny says, “The truth is that it’s not my call. Maybe it’s not the thing I would choose, but I’m not choosing. It’s your body. It needs to be your decision. But I’m behind whatever you do a hundred percent.” He steps closer and puts a hand on Patrick’s face. “You hear me? A hundred percent.”

Patrick nods. He remembers that look of horror on Jonny’s face, though, and he feels his own eyes filling with tears. “Jonny…”

Jonny leans down and kisses him, a soft press of lips. “Let’s figure it out after the wedding tomorrow, okay?”

***

The wedding is gorgeous, of course, weather perfect—as if Abby would have allowed it to be anything else—and standing up at the altar for the whole ceremony is one of the hardest things Patrick’s ever had to do.

It’s not like he’s a stranger to spending long periods of times on platforms standing still and looking blandly supportive, but usually it’s while someone official makes a speech about how this is going to be the Hawks’ year, not while two people declare their undying love and he can feel life within him. Sharpy’s looking at Abby, his face lit by the afternoon sunlight, and Patrick doesn’t think he’s ever seen that look on his face before. Maybe after the Cup—but this is different. Sharpy’s looking at Abby like he can’t believe how lucky he is that someone like Abby exists, that she’s here, standing across from him.

Patrick’s seen that look on Jonny’s face before. Eyes brightened in amazement—like Patrick’s the best thing he’s ever seen. Like Jonny wants to look at him forever. It always make Patrick’s breath catch, makes him surprised that something so good can exist in the universe.

The minister’s rambling on about equal partnership and self-sacrifice and mutual support. Patrick’s knees feel wobbly.

If he keeps this baby. If he doesn’t do anything to stop it. He’ll be able to hide it for a little while, but it will keep growing. It will balloon outward, and he won’t be able to hold it back, and soon everyone who looks at him will know. He won’t be able to play hockey. And the thing he’s worked so hard to hide for his entire career will be out in the open.

If he doesn’t keep this baby…

“For better or for worse,” Sharpy says, repeating after the minister, “for richer or poorer,” and Patrick wonders how difficult it’s been for them. How much they’ve had to struggle to create an equal partnership despite having such unequal places in the world. Patrick’s been so lucky, with Jonny: they’ve always been equals on the ice, battling side by side toward the same dreams. He’s never had to sit at home and watch Jonny on TV and resent him for being so far away and so successful without him. He’s never had to question how Jonny views him: as a hockey player, fast and skilled and invaluable on his wing. He’s never had to question how he views himself.

The look on Jonny’s face, last night, when Patrick told him he couldn’t keep the baby.

He needs to see Jonny, suddenly—needs to replace that memory with something else. His eyes dart into the rows of guests and land on Jonny right away. Jonny’s looking back at him already, unwavering, like he doesn’t see anything else in the world. The bond snaps between them, sure and strong, and Patrick breathes easier because of it.

“In sickness and in health,” Sharpy says, and Patrick can’t help the way his own face twists a little. Fuck, maybe this isn’t technically sickness, but his stomach turns over and it is, it is. His body is sick. Is wrong. Jonny’s never seen it that way: not even at the beginning, when Patrick didn’t have a chance to warn him about the weirdness that came with an omega wolf—Jonny somehow, against all odds, Jonny loved it. Loved him. But Patrick can feel the wrongness of it.

He's never wanted anyone to find out. That’s always been the goal. Don’t let anyone find out he’s a wolf.

“As long as we both shall live,” Sharpy says, and—that’s never been in doubt for Patrick. He knew there would be no one else for him but Jonny before he even knew Jonny could be his. He knows there’s almost nothing Jonny wouldn’t do for him. He knows that if he asked, Jonny wouldn’t hesitate to get up on an altar like this and pledge to be his forever.

He also knows what would follow: the recriminations in the press, the jeers, the interview questions that would always be about the same thing. The way it would never be hockey first again, ever.

And he knows what would happen if the world found out he’s a wolf. It would be worse.

He looks at Jonny again. Jonny, who’s in this just as much as Patrick is; Jonny, who looked at him last night like someone had shattered him. Jonny, who wants this baby.

There’s not a lot Patrick wouldn’t do for Jonny. But he thinks about the life within him, how it’s going to keep growing and growing until no one will look at him without seeing it. How he’ll be forced out of hiding like an animal chased down by hunters, on a field under the blazing sun with nowhere to hide. He thinks of Cody not standing up for his little sister and the sneer on Duncs’ lips as he said the word “animal” and the fear he's seen in people’s eyes. He’s standing here and watching Sharpy and Abby pledge to love each other forever and it’s growing inside him, even now: it’s getting bigger and more inescapable and maybe he can’t actually feel it, but it seems like he can. Like any second now this baby is going to burst out of his stomach à la the crazy Twilight kid, or maybe claw its way into his lungs…

His eyes go back to Jonny in the audience. Jonny’s still looking at him, steady and constant, like maybe he hasn’t looked away this whole time. The best thing Patrick’s ever known, the best thing he could ever imagine.

Patrick would do almost anything for him. But he can’t have this baby.

***

There are pictures afterward, and they take fucking forever.

Patrick’s shaky with adrenaline the whole time, fighting to stand still and not sprint out of each picture as soon as the shutter clicks down. He keeps finding himself edging up behind whoever’s in front of him, trying to hide his stomach even though he knows he’s still got his six-pack. His shirt is soaked through at the back with sweat.

Finally the photographer dismisses everyone except the family, and Patrick walks dizzily to the reception hall.

Jonny’s standing in a group that includes Duncs and Seabs, chatting and eating cocktail food. But he goes intense and focused the moment Patrick appears at his side.

“Can I talk to you?” Patrick asks, and Jonny doesn’t lose a second before ditching his plate and drink and following him out. They go outside, where it’s starting to get dark, and Patrick’s clinging to Jonny as soon as they’re out of sight of the party, or maybe before; he almost doesn’t care anymore, just needs to touch.

“Hey,” Jonny says, pulling him in, pressing a hand to the back of his neck. “Hey, it’s okay. What’s up?”

“Jonny.” Patrick presses his face into Jonny’s neck, breathes him in in harsh, rough breaths. “Jonny. I can’t—I can’t have this baby.”

He feels Jonny go tense, just a little. A tiny moment of rigidity that passes, and then Jonny’s holding him tighter than ever. “It’s okay,” he says, softer, and this time the words have more weight.

Patrick might be crying a little. He can feel the dampness where he’s pressed to Jonny’s collar. “I know you—”

“Sh. No. It’s _okay,”_ Jonny says. His arms are solid around Patrick, as solid as the bond Patrick can feel between them. “We’ll make an appointment with a specialist as soon as we get back to Chicago,” he says, and Patrick relaxes in his arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Patrick finds out he's pregnant and gives serious consideration to having an abortion even though he knows Jonny is unhappy with the idea. Patrick's considerations for and against are all emotional or logistical rather than ethical. I've done my best to make them both as supportive of each other's wishes as possible.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Forgot to warn for abortion-related content in this chapter. See end notes for spoilers!

“What do you mean, you don’t have a doctor?” Jonny demands on their first morning back in Chicago.

Patrick blinks up at him from the pillows. “Too early for yelling,” he mumbles.

“I’m not yelling,” Jonny says, really loudly, and Patrick just looks at him until he rolls his eyes and lowers his voice. “Okay, fine, but seriously, Patrick? You’ve been in Chicago for three years, playing an insanely dangerous sport, and you don’t have a doctor?”

Patrick rolls his eyes. “First of all, since when is hockey ‘insanely dangerous’?” he asks, air quotes and all. “Second, uh, trainers. Duh.”

“The trainers don’t know you’re a wolf.” Jonny has that particular glare he gets when he is mad about something and really determined to fix it. “That’s it, we’re finding you a wolf doctor.”

Patrick grabs his wrist before he can leave the room. “No,” he says.

“No?” Jonny stops and squints at him. “What do you mean? You need a—”

“No,” Patrick says. He tries to find other words, but he’s breathing fast, and the words won’t quite come. “I, um.”

Jonny stops squinting and settles on the mattress in front of him. “Patrick?” he asks, gentle, like he always gets when Patrick’s freaking out.

It helps so much, and Patrick hates that he keeps needing it. It’s been so good, for the past almost-year, him and Jonny solid around each other and the wolf thing under control. Now he feels like he’s been in a continual freak-out for the past four days. And it’ll only get worse. That’s why he has to—

Jonny’s hand settles on the back of his neck.

“They’ll know about me,” Patrick says. He wraps his hands around his ankles and squeezes tight. “That’s why I don’t have a doctor. It’s not safe for anyone to know.”

“I know,” Jonny says softly, and he runs his thumb over the joint of Patrick’s jaw.

Patrick tips to the side and leans his head on Jonny’s shoulder. “Not everyone is like you and Sharpy.”

“You were going to tell other people before, though,” Jonny says. “When Sharpy reacted so well. You were talking about telling other people on the team, so maybe—”

He cuts off, maybe because Patrick has gone so rigid in his arms. “Pat?”

“You don’t get it,” Patrick says, voice low. “You think—everyone’s just going to accept this. And maybe that’s true for some people, but most people don’t think like that, and they’ll—it won’t be okay.”

Jonny buries his face in Patrick’s hair. “They’d never kick you off the team for this.”

Patrick is silent. Jonny doesn’t get it. He’s never had anyone hate him for what he is.

Jonny breathes deeply against Patrick’s hair. “We’ll come up with another way,” he says softly.

***

The other way, it turns out, is a doctor coming to Jonny’s condo.

“What?” Patrick says when Jonny suggests it. “You can’t just—they’ll still—”

“We’ll have her sign an NDA,” Jonny says. “She won’t know anything until she’s here, and then she’ll have signed it. There won’t be office staff or anything.”

Patrick looks at him suspiciously. “How did you get her to come here in the first place?”

“I, um.” Now Jonny looks kind of embarrassed. “I told her I found a wolf beaten up near my place, and he refused to go to the emergency room.”

Patrick gives him a look. “That is a terrible lie.”

“Hey, she’s coming, so it can’t have been that terrible.”

“Probably just to see who would make up that awful a lie,” Patrick mutters, but he doesn’t argue. This is probably the best he’ll get.

He can’t eat anything the next morning when she’s supposed to arrive. He’s still throwing up most mornings, and now he can’t even work out because Jonny won’t let him.

“I’m not going to, like, trip and fall over my uterus,” Patrick says when Jonny brings that up, right after they get back to Chicago. Jesus. He doesn’t think a tiny cluster of cells in his gut is going to get in his way that badly.

“You shouldn’t,” Jonny says. “Not until the doctor says it’s okay.”

It’s the kind of statement Patrick could ignore, if he wanted to. But that’s the thing about Jonny being his alpha, even if he’s not a wolf: doing what Jonny wants makes Patrick feel genuinely good, like there’s some kind of positive feedback loop. It’s even worse now than it usually is: hearing Jonny tell him to do something for his own good makes Patrick want to roll around on his back and have Jonny rub his tummy and then maybe move his hand lower.

Patrick is so ready for these stupid pregnancy hormones to be gone.

So he doesn’t go work out with Jonny, and he doesn’t eat, but he does pace up and down the apartment until Jonny comes back all sweaty. And then he does think really hard about jumping Jonny—the giving protective orders thing really does it for him, after all, and Jonny looks good flushed, and it’s been a while—but Jonny says, “Gotta jump in the shower, doctor in twenty,” so Patrick delays that plan.

The doctor gets there a few minutes after Jonny comes out of the shower. She’s middle-aged, dark hair, glasses. She shakes Jonny’s hand at the door, and then she looks over his shoulder to Patrick and her mouth drops into an _O_.

Patrick has to fight the urge to back up as she approaches. It’s so counterintuitive to stand still when a wolf is coming within smelling distance of him. He’s spent the last three-plus years expressly avoiding that. But he holds his ground as she comes up to him, and he sees her nostrils flare.

“And you must be Patrick Kane,” she says, and Patrick knows, _knows,_ that Jonny didn’t give her that name. That she recognizes him.

He watches her breathe in deeply again, and her face changes a little. Realization.

“There was no wolf that got beaten up,” she says slowly. Patrick’s hands prick with sweat.

Jonny clears his throat. “We…have an NDA for you to sign.”

Jonny goes to file it away, and Dr. Roslin goes with Patrick into the living room. She’s a mated beta, and she has a soothing presence that Patrick tries to absorb. It doesn’t entirely work. But it’s okay: she signed the thing; she’s not going to tell anyone. Even if she’s a hockey fan, she’s not going to be able to do anything about it. It’s fine.

“So, how far along are you?” she asks, and Patrick feels his face crumple.

Her hands are on him right away. It’s a wolf thing: touching to ease distress, to build connection, for any reason at all, really. It’s been a long time since Patrick’s had other wolves around to touch him like that, but it feels natural anyway. It calms him enough to get him sitting down.

Dr. Roslin does some basic tests: temperature, eyes, ears, throat, reflexes. Not blood pressure—she only does that after Jonny comes back in and stands behind Patrick, thumb brushing the base of his neck and relaxing him instantly. Patrick wonders if it’s on purpose, if it’s standard procedure with mated wolves, or if she can just tell how close Patrick is to losing it.

She sits back a little once she’s done with the basic tests, her hands leaving Patrick’s skin. “So, you two are bonded,” she says, and they both nod. Patrick wonders if she can smell it, or if she can just read it in the way they stand, in the way everything changes for Patrick when Jonny’s hand is on him.

“And you’re the father?” she says to Jonny. Patrick can feel his thumb press a little more firmly against the knob of bone at the base of Patrick’s neck. “Great—let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”

She puts her stethoscope back in her ears. She goes to put it on his stomach, and Patrick puts a hand out to stop her.

“You don’t need to,” he says. “We—um. We can’t keep it.”

Jonny’s hand covers the whole base of his neck, little wisps of something coming through the bond, _good_ and _you_ and _mine._

Patrick can see the flare of surprise in her eyes. It’s not like how Jonny had looked when Patrick brought it up: haunted, haggard. It’s just surprise.

“I know it’s not normal for wolves,” he says hurriedly. His stomach is churning, and he wishes suddenly that he’d had something to eat, or maybe that he’d thrown up more this morning. “It’s just—with hockey, and—”

“That’s fine,” she says smoothly. “We can figure out a way to make that happen. We should hurry, though. You’re almost done with your first trimester, and the longer you wait, the rougher it will be on your body.”

Patrick’s nodding, and then he stops, and Jonny’s hand squeezes him once in confusion. “That’s not—wait,” Patrick says. “I told you just over six weeks.”

She looks at him a little blankly, like she’s not sure what he’s getting at. “Your trimesters are eight weeks,” she says.

Patrick stares at her.

“Hang on,” Jonny says slowly. “He’s only going to be pregnant for six months?”

Dr. Roslin nods, frowning like she’s missing something. “Gestation is slightly shorter for wolves, and shorter for male wolves in particular. The body is less adapted for a long pregnancy. I thought you’d—” And then Patrick can’t anymore, can’t keep listening to this, and he bursts out with, “I’m not.”

The doctor cuts off, and Jonny jerks a little in surprise. “You’re not what?” the doctor asks.

“Going to be pregnant.” Patrick hunches his shoulders. His stomach settles into a dull ache. “For six months.”

Jonny stills. “Right,” he says.

“Let me find you some information,” Dr. Roslin says.

***

Dr. Roslin, it turns out, is a godsend and is willing to send Patrick’s medical information to the abortion clinic under a false name. There’s only one clinic within an hour of Chicago that will operate on male wolves, and they can get an appointment either Friday or two weeks from now.

“The convention is this weekend,” Jonny says when Patrick tells him the choices.

“Then let’s get this out of the way first,” Patrick says firmly, and Jonny doesn’t argue.

They curl up in bed, and Patrick thinks about his fantasy earlier that day: of Jonny looming over him, running a hand down Patrick’s belly and working his way slowly toward his dick. Of having something inside his ass again. But Jonny’s snug against his back, and Patrick feels warm and contained, and he wraps himself in the feeling and shuts his eyes and lets himself drift off.

***

It’s a long few days until Friday. Jackie calls him on Thursday night, when Patrick’s sitting around being tense about the next morning, and he thinks about not answering, but it’s been so long since they’ve talked.

“Oh my God, you haven’t called in foreverrrrr,” she says when he finally answers.

Patrick forces a laugh. “Sorry, been celebrating weddings and shit. Stuff.”

She scoffs. “You’re allowed to swear around me. And Patrick Sharp is a bullshit reason not to pick up your phone.”

Patrick knows that. He’s never gone this long without talking to Jackie, not in all the years since he first left home. It’s just that he’s not sure how well he can lie to her.

After tomorrow, there won’t be anything to lie about.

“Won’t happen again,” he says.

“Are you okay?” she says. “You don’t sound normal.”

And see, this is why he knew he wouldn’t be able to talk to her. She just picks up on stuff about him. “Kind of tired,” he says. “Really long workout today.”

That one’s a total lie. The doctor said Patrick could work out, but Jonny kept him to a light one under the excuse of “a major medical procedure tomorrow, Patrick,” even though Patrick tried to protest that it wasn’t that major. But that meant thinking about the actual procedure, and Patrick still can’t quite handle that. So he had a short workout, and Jonny had a long one, including, like, a million crunches that Patrick watched jealously (and maybe a little bit lustfully—it really has been a long time since they’ve had sex).

“Yeah, yeah, sports, et cetera,” Jackie says. “When are you coming to visit?”

God. Patrick would love to come visit. He can’t do it while he’s pregnant, though; she’d be able to tell in a single breath, just like the doctor could. And even if he knows he can’t have this baby, he can’t imagine trying to explain that to his little sister.

“Soon,” he says. After tomorrow. After he has his body back.

***

Friday morning is stupidly beautiful. Patrick feels like the weather is mocking him.

He wakes up with the kind of tension he used to get on the mornings of big tests in school, back before school started counting so much less than hockey. It’s not the kind of nerves he gets before big hockey things. There, it’s at least equal parts nerves and excitement. This is just a kind of wordless terror, mixed with a refrain of _get it out get it out get it out._

He will. In just a few hours, it’ll be over.

Jonny’s extra nice to him, and it makes Patrick feel guilty but he loves it at the same time. He makes Patrick eggs with real bacon, which Patrick usually only gets on one of their birthdays, and he lets them eat in the living room so that Patrick can lean against his chest the whole time. It’s kind of disgustingly codependent and Patrick needs it so much right now.

“All be over soon,” Jonny says as they get into the car, and Patrick is so anxious for that to happen, even though he doesn’t want to go through what’ll happen in the interim. Every mile on the way to the clinic feels endless and also way too short.

It’s a forty-five-minute ride. Patrick’s hand is sore from gripping the door handle by the time they get there.

They put on baseball caps to go inside. It’s a terrible disguise, and it would have been smarter for Jonny to have stayed home, but no way in hell was Patrick facing this without him. He’s having a hard enough time walking in a straight line across the parking lot with Jonny’s hand on his back. Jonny doesn’t waver, though, and they make it through the door.

“Told you we’d be early,” Patrick mutters, and Jonny grunts in acknowledgment. If they’d been on time, they could have gone right into a room and gotten it over with, but as it is, they get sent over to a row of plastic chairs and have to sit down and pull their baseball caps down over their faces.

There aren’t a lot of other people in the room. A teenage girl, a young couple looking at their phones. Even so, it’s not really safe for Jonny to have his hand on Patrick’s arm the way he does. Patrick doesn’t tell him to move it, though.

A couple of other people come in and go on through, people who probably want simple things like an STI screening or a handful of condoms. They’ve been sitting there for maybe fifteen minutes when a couple comes in with a baby.

Patrick startles a little. It’s just—he was thinking of this as an abortion clinic. Not as a place where he might see a baby.

He tries not to look at it. But it’s up against its dad’s shoulder, looking straight back at them, and Patrick can’t help but notice the brown of its eyes. Kind of like what Jonny’s eyes would look like, if they were on a baby.

Patrick looks away. He can feel himself starting to breathe harder, adrenaline tightening his chest, and he doesn’t need that right now. He just needs to get through this and to the other side.

Jonny must notice, because he squeezes his arm. “Are you okay?” he asks, sotto voce.

“Yeah. I just…I didn’t know they saw newborns at Planned Parenthood,” Patrick says, lamely.

“I guess they do all sorts of things,” Jonny says.

The couple sits down across the room from Patrick and Jonny. The baby fusses a little bit, and the mom takes it, giving it her finger to grasp and bouncing it a little. It makes faces, mouth working and a little spit bubble coming out.

“Do you want to go get some air?” Jonny asks.

“Yeah,” Patrick says. “Maybe just a—”

“Brent Sharp?” says a person in a white coat in the doorway, and it takes a second for Patrick to remember that that’s the name he gave them. He gets to his feet.

It’s really hard to walk after the doctor. A little like the feeling of coming off the ice, when it feels like his feet are meeting too much resistance. Jonny’s hand is on his back, and that helps push him forward, but his skin feels like it’s crawling. Like…like he shouldn’t be going into this narrow hallway. Like…

The guy in the white coat leads him into a room. Medical table, paper cover, white machinery, dividing curtain, all the usual. The light seems really bright.

He hands Patrick a paper gown. “Go ahead and put this on, Mr. Sharp. The doctor will be right with you.”

The door shuts, and it’s a relief, but Patrick still has that feeling, like he wants to crawl out of there. “Jonny,” he says, “Jonny,” and turns toward him, but Jonny puts his hands on the gown, where Patrick’s holding it in front of him.

“You have to change,” Jonny says, and he takes the gown out of Patrick’s hands and shakes it out. “Here, take off your shirt and pants.”

Patrick does, but it doesn’t really feel it’s like him that’s doing it. The air of the room is cold on his skin, and Jonny slides the thin paper of the gown onto his body. “Your underpants,” he says, and Patrick lets him pull them down. The air is a shock on his bare ass.

He only half-notices Jonny turning him around and tying the little paper strings that keep the gown closed. He wants to put his hands over his stomach. He holds off, but it’s a struggle every moment he stands there, too exposed and vulnerable.

“Want to get up on the table?” Jonny asks, and Patrick takes the two steps and settles on the crackly paper at the end.

Half an hour and this will be over.

It feels like they wait a long time. Jonny stands next to him and slides an arm around his waist. Patrick grabs his other hand and holds on, tight tight tight.

The door finally opens again, and Patrick flinches and pushes back into Jonny’s touch. The woman who comes in is older, with white hair, and she seems soft somehow, like her skin would feel powdery if he touched it. Patrick’s stomach clenches like he’s going to throw up.

“Mr. Sharp.” She looks at him over her glasses. “We discussed your options on the phone?”

Patrick nods. There were a lot of options, but not that many that were recommended for male omegas. “We decided on the shot,” he says, and his voice is just a scrape of sound.

She nods. “Is there anything you want to ask me before we get started?”

“No,” he says, and then when she turns to get something on the counter, he says, “Yes.”

She turns back, eyebrows raised.

“It is—” He clears his throat. “I mean, when it, the b—the fetus, when you—what happens to it? Does it just, I mean…”

She waits for a moment before answering, but he can’t find any more words. “Your body will process this like a miscarriage,” she says. “The fetal matter will be reabsorbed. There may be some minor discharge.”

“Right,” Patrick says. He takes a deep breath and grips Jonny’s hand.

She waits, like he might have another question, and then she turns back around and fiddles with something on the counter. There’s a gleam from something metal, something long like a needle. Patrick’s stomach flips over. But when she turns back to him, there’s nothing in her hands but a squeeze bottle.

“I’m going to need you to lie back,” she says to him. “We’ll do an ultrasound to pinpoint the location of the injection.”

Patrick breathes more. He can do this.

The table is this thing that converts into a chair when you raise the back and press something at the front, and once Patrick’s tilted back in it, he can’t sit up again easily because of the angle. He could still roll off to the side, and that makes him feel better, knowing he has that escape route—but he’s not going to escape. He’s going to sit here and get through this.

The ultrasound machine gets rolled over, and then he’s blocked on all sides.

Jonny stands next to him and keeps holding his hand while the doctor lifts his gown. “This may be a little cold,” she says, and then something slick is being squirted on his stomach. He bites his lip against the sensation.

There’s some fiddling with the machine, and Patrick breathes through it, wills his stomach to relax, because this is all fine. They’re just looking. This is fine.

Then there are some thumping sounds from the machine—a heartbeat, from everything Patrick’s seen on TV. He looks up at the ceiling so that he doesn’t accidentally look at the screen.

“Everything looks fine,” the doctor says, a little absently. Patrick doesn’t even want to know that. He’s squeezing Jonny’s hand so hard it must hurt.

“I think we’re ready to go,” she says. Something cold and wet swabs the side of Patrick’s stomach, and he looks down. The doctor’s getting up, going over to the counter.

He’s breathing too much. His head is spinning a little, floating, not quite attached to his neck. Jonny’s standing next to him, really close, but he feels too far away. He should be…he should be standing in front of Patrick. Between Patrick and the woman who’s approaching him, holding the needle.

She takes the needle out of its sterile plastic covering. Patrick’s blood is galloping all over his body, making him fight for stillness. Making his chest feel like it’s going to explode.

Just another minute. Another minute, and this will be over, and he can go back to training for the season, and he can have his own body back, and it will all be normal. It will be good.

She places the tip of the needle against his skin. He sees her arm flex, about to push it in, and—

“No!”

His shout rings through the air, and everything stops.

The doctor’s frozen above him, the tip of the needle just brushing his skin. Patrick’s breathing hard. There’s sweat on his forehead. He can’t gulp down enough air.

“Patrick.” Jonny’s leaning over him. “Patrick, are you—what—”

“I can’t,” Patrick says. He grips Jonny’s hand harder. “Jonny, I’m sorry, I just can’t—”

“Oh, thank God,” Jonny says, and he’s leaning over, shaking, hands on his knees like he just got done sprinting a mile. His back is quaking, like—like sobs—

“Oh,” Patrick says.

Jonny looks up, and there are tears pouring down his face. He puts a fist in front of his mouth like he’s trying to choke back the sobs, but Patrick’s already reaching for him and pulling him up.

“I’m so sorry,” Jonny says into his shoulder when Patrick’s holding him. “I wasn’t going to, I swear, I—I didn’t think I would do this.”

“It’s okay,” Patrick says. He presses Jonny’s face into his neck and holds on while Jonny’s sobs shake out of him. He can feel the trembling in his own gut, the relief. “It’s okay, love.”

“I’ll just put this away,” the doctor says, and neither of them responds. They cling to each other and wait for the rest of the storm to pass.

***

Neither of them is in a condition to drive right away, so they go out to the car and hold each other in the back seat and wait out the tremors.

“That was dumb of us,” Patrick says, and it’s safe to say it now that there’s no risk of anyone coming at him with a needle. He feels giddy with the relief, nervy with impending disaster. “What are we going to do now?”

“I guess…” Jonny’s hand trails down Patrick’s chest to his stomach. “I guess we’re having this baby.”

Adrenaline flutters in Patrick’s gut, underneath Jonny’s hand. He’s so glad to have Jonny next to him. “We’ll have to tell people,” he says. “We’ll have to tell the team.”

“After the convention,” Jonny says. “We’ll just—get through that, then get management together. Call Brisson first.”

“Fuck, he doesn’t know,” Patrick says. He wants to laugh—at the craziness, at the ludicrousness of the amount of shit he’s about to bring down on his head. He never had any reason to tell Brisson. He never told anyone he didn’t have to.

Now he’s going to tell the team. He’s going to sit in a room with them and tell them, to their faces, that he’s a wolf.

The urge to laugh bubbles up in his throat. “Fuck, Jonny,” he says, and some of the laughter bubbles out. Once it starts, he can’t make it stop. 

“Are—are you okay?” Jonny asks, alarmed.

Patrick can barely get words out through the laughter. “We…should have used a condom,” he manages to say.

Jonny snorts, and then he’s laughing, too, both of them shaking with it. They hold each other in the back seat of the car and laugh, and laugh.

***

Convention is…rough.

It’s always been so much fun for Patrick, meeting the fans. He’s good at smiling, laughing, charming people’s he’s just met. He feeds off their energy. It’s one of the few times he can risk getting close to people without worrying who’s a wolf in the room, because in a group this big, all the scents get confused. He loves that freedom.

This time, though, he feels like all his smiles are pasted on. Every time someone asks him a question about the upcoming season, he can’t help thinking, _Don’t ask me—I won’t be there._ Then his forehead pricks with sweat and the camera people glare at him because they’re supposed to look nice today, not like they went for a ten-mile run and forgot to shower.

The worst part, though, is that he can’t stick with Jonny.

To be fair, Jonny does do a lot of stuff with him. They’re still seen as a pair, Kane and Toews, even if the public doesn’t know to what extent that’s really true. They do a signing together the first day, and they’re on two different panels together, but Patrick has to do another one with just Sharpy and another with Stan and some of the guys, and being in a room without Jonny is a lot harder than it would have been even a week ago. Maybe it’s because he’s so shaky from yesterday, but every time he looks around and doesn’t see Jonny, his stomach cramps and he has to take a couple of deep breaths to resettle himself.

“I think it’s a protection thing,” Jonny says in a low voice as they’re setting up for one of their panels. “Our—it—was just threatened yesterday, right? So maybe the bond is telling us not to be apart.”

“Dumb bond,” Patrick grumbles, because it sucks, feeling like he can’t be in a room without Jonny for five minutes. He’s an adult, for fuck’s sake. He was away from Jonny for days at a time last week, and he was fine (well, mostly fine). But he wasn’t feeling shaky like this back then.

It does help having teammates around, a little. Patrick’s wolf has always recognized them as pack, almost, and he can relax partway when there are a bunch of them in the room with him. Especially Sharpy, who knows what’s going on and so gives Patrick an extra-long hug when he first sees him on Saturday morning.

“You suck at answering texts,” Sharpy says, and Patrick gives him a weak smile.

“How was the honeymoon?” he asks.

Sharpy waves a hand. “Awesome, obviously. But don’t think this is over.” He points at his eyes, then Patrick’s. “We are talking about this.”

Oh, good. Patrick’s favorite thing to do.

The worst thing, though, is the way he can’t touch Jonny, even when they are in the same room together. They can do little things: bro-punches on the arm, arms over each other’s shoulders. The kind of thing Patrick’s used to them being able to do around the team. But that’s not enough to calm the shakiness inside him.

He can tell it’s getting to Jonny, too, in their panel that afternoon. Jonny’s hands are under the table, and Patrick can see them fidgeting. He keeps looking over at Patrick, a little too often, a little too long. Patrick wants to slide a hand into his, just give them both that point of connection they need, but there are three hundred people in the room who would notice that right now.

As soon as the panel’s over, Jonny grabs Patrick and pulls him through a door off the stage into an empty room.

“Oh fuck,” Jonny says, as he wraps his arms around Patrick and they hold each other close. Patrick takes a deep breath and lets it out for the first time in what feels like hours. Jonny’s nose nudges at his neck, and Patrick closes his eyes and tilts his head to the side, giving him access for the soft strokes he’s making.

“Need to have you like this,” Jonny says, and Patrick just says _mm_ and leans more heavily against Jonny’s shoulder.

They have to separate way too soon, but it helps. And then they get to go home when the evening stuff is over and hold each other all night long.

The second day is more of the same, except that Patrick corners Stan late in the afternoon and says, “Hey, do you think I could talk to you and Q tomorrow?”

Stan’s gaze sharpens immediately, like Patrick knew it would. “Sure,” he says easily enough, but Patrick can already see him calculating the possibilities. “Is there any reason I should have PR in the meeting?”

Patrick wishes he could say no, but—“Maybe, yeah,” he says. “And, um—maybe legal?”

Stan makes a face Patrick never wants to see directed at him. “Okay, kid, we’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, and Patrick wishes there were any, literally any other choice besides that room tomorrow or the needle back at the abortion clinic.

“Maybe I should run away and join the circus,” he says to Jonny in the car on the way home. Most of the other guys are going out, but Patrick can’t drink right now anyway, and hell if he’s going to spend another hour in a place where he can’t touch Jonny. “I’d be good on the trapeze, don’t you think?”

“A pregnant trapeze artist,” Jonny says drily. “You’ll be a sensation.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Patrick says. “I’ll just, you know, take a leave of absence. Tell the team I need a year off to explore my many other talents.”

“You are aware that you have a contract, right?” Jonny asks.

“Contract, schmontract,” Patrick says. “They’ll never track me down as Lulu, the pregnant bearded lady at Ringling Brothers Circus.”

Jonny brings the car to a stop in his parking spot. “It’s going to be okay,” he says, and Patrick unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car without responding, because yeah, maybe it’ll be a lot of things, but it won’t be okay.

He goes upstairs and fiddles around with some dishes even though he hates doing them because there was another reason he skipped going out tonight, and he wants to put it off for as long as possible.

When he concludes that all the dishes in Jonny’s kitchen are, in fact, clean, he goes into the living room with the vague intention of playing a video game or two, only to find Jonny sitting on the couch, holding his phone with both hands.

And yes, this is just what Patrick was avoiding. “So, Call of Duty?” he tries.

“I was wondering if you’d let me call Brisson,” Jonny says.

Patrick sits down and looks at the blank TV. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Obviously,” Jonny says with a huff. “But I’m having this baby, too.”

“You’re not the one who has to take the next five months off,” Patrick says.

“No, but…” Jonny’s hands curl around the phone. “I’m the alpha.”

Patrick looks at him through narrow eyes. He is, sort of, the alpha, in that Patrick’s wolf sees him that way, but he doesn’t usually presume upon it.

“It’s just…isn’t it my job to take care of you?” Jonny asks.

“Yeah.” Patrick reaches out with one socked foot to poke at Jonny’s. “But it doesn’t mean you have to do stuff for me just because I don’t want to do it myself.”

“I want to, though,” Jonny says quietly.

Patrick considers. Considers what would be gained by having Jonny call, and what would be lost, and how much he’s dreading saying the words. “Let’s call him together.”

They set themselves up so that Patrick is leaning back against Jonny’s chest, Jonny’s arms around him, with the phone in front of them. It’s the position where Patrick feels safest in the entire world, basically (except pressed down on a bed with Jonny’s body on top of him, and that wouldn’t really be well-suited to a phone call). He still feels horribly exposed as Jonny presses the call button.

“Toews,” Brisson says over the speaker phone, and Jonny’s hands press against Patrick’s stomach and chest. “Comment ça va?”

“It’s Patrick and Jonny, actually,” Jonny says. “We have some news.”

There’s a short pause. “Well, you aren’t up for a contract extension for another five years,” Brisson says jokingly. “What’s the news?”

“We’re having a baby,” Jonny says.

He says it in his media monotone, but Patrick can feel the way his body tightens. It can be hard, sometimes, to tell what’s coming through the bond and what’s just obvious when they’re pressed together like this, but either way, Patrick knows Jonny is nervous.

There’s a long pause, and then Brisson starts laughing. “Okay, that’s a good one,” he says. “Who is this really? Sharp?”

Patrick swallows. “No,” he says, and he wants to crawl backwards into Jonny’s chest. “It’s really us.”

“Patrick’s pregnant,” Jonny says.

There’s another pause, and Brisson swears. “You guys had better start from the beginning.”

Jonny does, and Patrick is so, so grateful that he’s on this call with him, because he doesn’t think he could explain all of this as levelly as Jonny’s doing it. “We’re going to tell the team tomorrow,” he finishes up. “We thought you should know.”

“Did you…” Brisson trails off and clears his throat. “Have you considered other options?”

Patrick expected that—there’s no way no one will bring it up—but he tenses anyway. “Yeah. We have,” he says. “It’s not—this is it.”

“Well, I can’t say I advise in favor of any of this,” Brisson says. “Even if this doesn’t get out, it’s going to be a nightmare for you in about twelve different ways.”

“We know,” Jonny says, sliding his arms farther around Patrick.

“I have to say, I wish I’d had a heads up about the potential for this situation,” Brisson says. “From Patrick, especially.”

Patrick can’t deny feeling guilty—but he also can’t honestly say he’d go back and do anything differently, three years ago when he signed with Brisson. “Sorry,” he says finally. “I didn’t—I didn’t think it was safe to tell anyone.”

Brisson just swears again. “Make sure the meeting is in the afternoon,” he says. “I’m getting on a plane in the morning,” and then the call is over. Patrick turns around so that he can press his face into Jonny’s chest.

“He doesn’t think they’ll kick you off the team,” Jonny says.

“But he thinks he needs to be there,” Patrick says into his shirt.

“Not because they’re going to kick you off. There’s no no-wolf clause in your contract.”

Patrick doesn’t say anything, because there’s nothing he can say to make Jonny understand, if he thinks that’s how the world works. They don’t need to break his contract. They could just stop playing him much. Send him down to Rockford and eat the salary loss. Or trade him away, and he’d be apart from Jonny.

“You’re too valuable to them to lose,” Jonny whispers, but Patrick isn’t so sure. As a human, yes, but what about as a wolf?

***

There’s another call Patrick has to make that night, and this one he wants to make without Jonny there.

“It’s a wolf thing,” he says, even though that’s not exactly it. It’s more that he knows he’s going to cry about this, and he doesn’t want to do that in front of Jonny any more than he has to. Not when he knows this isn’t awful for Jonny the way it is for him.

“You owe me, like, a whole new wardrobe for not calling me for another three days,” Jackie says as soon as she picks up.

“Jackie,” he says, and her whole tone changes.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Jackie, I’m pregnant,” he says, and he was right: he does start to cry, as soon as the words are out.

“Oh my God,” she says, breathless. “Oh my God, that’s—Patty, that’s amazing!”

“No, it’s not,” he says. The tears are running down his face and onto his neck because he’s not wiping them away fast enough, and he hates that he feels so broken down, that he can’t keep it together. But it’s Jackie. “It’s—hockey, and I’m going to have to tell people, everyone will know—”

“But you’re going to have a baby,” she says, and. And.

It’s not like he didn’t know that. But the way she says it, like it’s not about the pregnancy at all, it’s—

“Pat?” she says, because he’s been silent for so long.

“Yeah,” he says, and then can’t think of anything to say after that. Because—he knew he was having a baby.

But he’s going to have a _baby._

“Holy fuck,” he says, and she mock-gasps at him for the swear, but he doesn’t care right now. He gets up from the bed, a little unsteady, but he doesn’t want to be alone in here anymore. “Are Mom and Dad home?” he asks. He thought he couldn’t do this, but maybe—

“Yeah, want me to get them?”

Patrick wanders out into the living room, where Jonny’s reading on the couch. His head snaps up as soon as Patrick comes in. “Mom, Dad,” Patrick says when Jackie’s brought them to the phone. He sits down by Jonny’s feet and wraps a hand around his ankle. He takes in a shaky breath. “Jonny and I have something to tell you.”

***

It doesn’t mean he’s thrilled about the situation or anything. He would still undo it in a heartbeat if it meant he didn’t have to go into that office tomorrow and tell management. But—

“How could you not realize there was going to be a baby?” Jonny asks when they’re in bed that night.

“It’s not that I didn’t realize it,” Patrick says. He was just so focused on the pregnancy that he hadn’t thought about what would come out of it. That they would have an actual baby. First it was about not wanting it, and then it was about not getting rid of it. It was never about having it.

“We can’t have a baby,” Patrick says. “We don’t even do our own grocery shopping.”

“Maybe we can train the baby to do it,” Jonny says. He’s half-smiling, leaning against the pillow, eyes bright and crinkling at the corners.

“I hope it looks like you,” Patrick blurts out, and it’s a stupid, sappy thing to say, but Jonny’s smile gets wider, and he presses his mouth to Patrick’s.

The kiss starts to get heated for the first time since before Rhode Island, and Patrick can feel his body saying, _yes, finally._ Just when he starts thinking about shifting closer, though, and rubbing his hard-on against Jonny’s, Jonny pulls back and curls up against his side.

“Love you,” Jonny whispers, and, well, Patrick can’t complain about that. Not when Jonny pulls him close and holds him tight and breathes softly against his neck until they’re both asleep.

***

He feels even sicker the next morning than he did before the abortion appointment, if possible. At least that time he was in denial about how much was at stake. Now he knows really, really well.

“Tell me I don’t have to do this,” he says to Jonny as they’re preparing to leave the house.

Jonny hesitates, because he’s pretty much an honest person. “You don’t have to do this _today,_ ” he finally says.

And that’s where Patrick’s stuck, because he knows if he puts it off, it’s only going to get worse. He’ll dread it and obsess about it and build it up and he knows himself: it’s always better if he gets things over with.

Unless…unless it’s the worst response, the one that means he doesn’t get to keep doing the only thing he’s ever wanted to do with his life, and in that case, he doesn’t want to know any sooner than he has to.

Why did he make this appointment for today, again?

He’s shaking so hard as they wind through corridors to Q’s office that he feels like his hands are blurring. He’s only felt this level of adrenaline a few times in his life, and they aren’t times he likes to look back on.

“You have a contract,” Jonny says to him as they approach Q’s office. “And they love you. It’s going to be fine. Remember Sharpy?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says. It helps a little. Sharpy didn’t react anything like what he thought. And he knows Stan; he lived in Stan’s house for his entire rookie year. He played with Stan’s kids. It’s not like he’s talking to strangers.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s do this.”

They meet Brisson in the hallway outside Q’s office. He shakes their hands, and he doesn’t flinch from Patrick’s. Patrick is so very glad of that right now. He doesn’t need anything else to scare him away from this.

They go in and shake hands and make small talk with Q and Stan. Leslie from Legal is there, too, and Brenda from PR. “Great convention, huh, boys?” Q says, and Patrick forces a smile.

They all settle down pretty fast, everyone clearly on edge. The others don’t know why—but they do know that Patrick requested this meeting, and it has to unnerve them that Brisson’s there. Patrick catches them giving Jonny looks, like they’re not sure why he’s here.

“So, you had something to talk to us about,” Stan says.

Patrick clears his throat. He glances over at Brisson, but he knows he has to be the one to say this. Brisson’s not going to step in unless it looks like he can’t do it. “Yes, sir,” he says. “The thing is. Um. I’m pregnant.”

The silence that fills the room after that seems to last for a long, long time. Patrick starts to have trouble drawing breath again. Jonny brushes a hand against his leg, just a light touch, and Patrick knows at least some of the others will notice it, but it doesn’t matter now. Not with what Patrick’s just said.

It’s Q who breaks the silence. “What exactly are you trying to tell us here, son?”

Patrick bites his lip. It’s not like there are any other reasons a guy could become pregnant.

“I think Kaner’s made it pretty clear,” Brisson says in a level voice.

“Holy God,” Brenda mutters.

“Wow.” Q blows out a stream of air, rubs a hand over his mustache. “I’ve gotta say, this is not what I was—”

“Patrick,” Stan cuts in. “Could you give us a minute to talk to Jon alone, here?”

Patrick blinks at him. He was expecting—there were all sorts of horrible things he was expecting, but none of them involved being sent out of the room so soon. No one’s even reacted at all yes, really.

He glances at Brisson, who shrugs minutely. “Okay,” Patrick says. “But—”

“Please,” Stan says. He’s not looking at Patrick.

Patrick gets up slowly. He makes eye contact with Jonny, and it’s clear Jonny’s just as baffled as he is. Patrick wishes he could touch him, wishes they didn’t have to separate right now. He’s glad Brisson will be in there, anyway, that he’s not leaving Jonny alone.

“I’ll just, um,” he says. “Be in the hallway.”

His legs feel disconnected from his body as he closes the door behind him and walks over to a row of chairs. He could try to hear—wolf hearing isn’t that much better than human, but it’s enough that he could stand next to the door and basically be part of the conversation. But he feels tenuous, like he might snap if he does that, so he sits down and presses his shaking hands to the plastic seat.

It’s not often that he can feel Jonny’s emotions. Mostly just when they’re very strong and directed at him. It happens much more easily when they’re touching. Then there’s the lower-level awareness he has almost all the time: where Jonny is in a room, just a hum of Jonny-ness from the other end of the couch. It’s comforting, grounding. Not the stuff of magic tricks or psychic sideshows or anything.

That’s why he thinks at first that the feeling building up in his mind is his own anxiety. He’s sitting fifteen feet from an office where four people just learned his biggest secret and are discussing what to do about him. Of course he’d be getting anxious. But the feeling just keeps building and building, like pressure in his skull, and after a bit he realizes that it’s coming from Jonny.

It’s coming from Jonny, but it’s not any particular emotion that Patrick can identify. More like a volume: if this were out loud, it would be a shout. Whatever Jonny’s feeling, he’s feeling it very seriously, and Patrick gets a sharp stab of fear. For himself, yeah, but also on a more primal level: his mate is in trouble, and Patrick has to help.

He stands up—and then stops, because for all that his wolf instincts are driving him into that office, his human side knows that he can’t go back in right now. Not when he was just asked to leave. But the pressure gets stronger in his head, and fuck it, it’s _Jonny._ He can’t stay out here.

He’s just crossing the corridor to the door when it opens, and Jonny comes out. Now Patrick can tell what he’s feeling, because it’s all over his face: anger.

“Thank fuck,” Patrick says. “Are you okay?”

“Fucking hell. Am I okay. Am _I_ okay.” Jonny’s face is as dark as three bad penalty calls, as a dirty hit against one of his own, as seeing Patrick come back over the boards with bruises. Worse. He grabs Patrick’s hand. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

Fear wraps itself all around Patrick’s stomach, and his breath is scattered out of him by the speed they’re moving at. “Jonny—”

“It’s okay,” Jonny says. “They’re not going to keep you from playing. But Brisson can handle the details. I’m not spending another minute in the building with those—”

“What?” Patrick can feel his heartbeat all over him, in his chest, in the pressure of Jonny’s fingers on his. “What did they say?” he asks, but Jonny shakes his head.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says, starts moving faster.

Patrick plants his feet. “Jonny!” he says, and Jonny turns to face him, startled, still flushed with anger. “You have to tell me what they said.”

Something shifts in Jonny’s face, and he looks less angry and more broken. “They said,” he says, then stops. “Patrick. You shouldn’t have to hear—”

“You fucking tell me,” Patrick says. He takes a step closer to Jonny. “You think I haven’t heard it all before? You think this stupid wolf-phobic shit doesn’t come at me from all sides?” He lowers his voice. “I need to know what they fucking said.”

“They said…” Jonny’s breath shudders out of him, and Patrick puts his hands around Jonny’s, where they’re clenched into fists. “They wanted to know if I was okay,” he says, voice going quiet. “If I’d been forced into anything, if you’d gotten violent, if—I needed help getting away from you.”

Patrick’s stomach shrivels up into a tiny pit of sickness. “They…”

“They thought you were going to hurt me.” Jonny presses his face into Patrick’s neck. “They thought _you_ were going to hurt _me._ ”

Patrick clenches his fingers around Jonny’s. “Was it just, like, the legal and PR people? Because they don’t even—”

“Stan,” Jonny says into Patrick’s skin. “It was—yeah. It was Stan.”

Patrick goes stiff. Stan is—Stan wouldn’t—

He pushes himself out of Jonny’s arms, takes a step back. “No. I mean—it was all of them, right? It was just, like, policy, they had to check. It wasn’t Stan, Stan wouldn’t—”

Jonny’s giving him this look, though, like he doesn’t want to say anything to hurt him further, and Patrick feels the same pressure of anger in his head as he did earlier, but this time he knows it’s all from himself.

“Fuck it. Let’s get out of here,” he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Patrick comes extremely close to getting an abortion and doesn't go through with it. We spend a lot of time in the abortion clinic with him, so be warned if that's something that might be triggering for you.


	4. Chapter 4

It’s a good thing Dr. Roslin told him he could do limited workouts, because Patrick gets home needing to punch things more than he’s ever needed to punch things in his life.

So maybe he doesn’t stick to the limited part. He goes to town on the punching bag in the gym in Jonny’s building, and then his hands are sore and he still has energy to burn, so he runs on a treadmill at a setting higher than he’s used since before the playoffs.

When Jonny comes down and pokes his head in, Patrick’s dripping sweat. He gives Jonny a glare, just in case he’s thinking about making this one of the times when he interferes on behalf of Patrick’s well-being. This is not a day when that will be a turn-on.

Maybe Jonny catches the warning, because all he says is, “Hey, so Sharpy asked if we could come over for dinner tonight.”

“Do I look like I want to see any fucking one tonight?” Patrick grunts.

“Okay, but you know what Sharpy’s never asked me?” Jonny asks.

“What?” Patrick asks, upping the speed on the treadmill.

“If I feel safe around you.”

“Motherfucking fuckface,” Patrick says, and he’s not talking about Jonny or Sharpy. He just—

He hits the stop button on the treadmill. “Fine. Whatever. We’ll go to dinner.”

***

Sharpy takes one look at their faces when they walk in the door and says, “Tell me who I need to kill.”

“Don’t worry, that’s my job,” Jonny says.

“No one is killing anyone,” Patrick says, “and we’re not going to talk about it.”

Except then Jonny gets Abby engaged in some ping-pong battle to the death, and Sharpy lures Patrick outside, and Patrick should have remembered that it’s really hard to keep anything from Sharpy one-on-one when he’s really trying to get it out of you, because the whole story spills out, everything that’s happened in the last week.

“That bastard,” Sharpy says when Patrick tells him about Stan.

“I—yeah,” Patrick says. “Yeah.”

“You know the rest of the team won’t be assholes like that,” Sharpy says, and Patrick just doesn’t say anything, because that is categorically untrue. Then Sharpy says, “Fuck, Peeks, you’re having a baby.”

“Yeah,” Patrick says weakly, and Sharpy gives him the hugest hug.

“Fucking furious at you for beating me there,” Sharpy whispers into the hug, and Patrick actually laughs a little.

It’s a good dinner, even if Patrick keeps zoning out from time to time, and on the way home, Jonny says, “By the way, I invited Jackie to stay with us.”

Patrick frowns. “You…invited Jackie…”

“She’ll be here tomorrow,” Jonny says. “I just, it’s been a while since you’ve seen her, and…”

Patrick hits him on the arm. “You fucker. I bet Sharpy didn’t invite us over for dinner tonight, either.”

“Of course he did,” Jonny says, looking deeply morally offended in the way that means he’s probably lying.

Patrick glares at him. “You’re trying to—distract me, or whatever.”

“No, I’m—well, okay, a little,” Jonny says, and Patrick hits him on the arm again. “But—ow, hey, driving.”

“Should have thought of that before all your sneaky manipulation,” Patrick says.

“I just—you’re a wolf,” Jonny says. He shrugs sheepishly. “I thought maybe right now, you could use a pack.”

That’s—oh. “Damn it, Toews, you are really hard to hate sometimes,” Patrick says, because that thought is lodging somewhere in the center of belly and making him warm. Jonny, his alpha, making sure he has a pack around him.

It’s one of those stupid instinctive things that shouldn’t influence his emotions as much it does, but where Jonny’s concerned, Patrick’s thoughts and instincts are often disturbingly on the same page. Right now, for example, both of them are making a dumb little smile play over his lips and the warmth settle lower in his body. Both of them are telling him to let Jonny shove him up against something and take him.

It’s been a while, and now that the idea’s in his head, Patrick feels antsy with it for the rest of the drive. The desire to have Jonny’s hands all over him, pinning him down, making him feel things. He’s kind of wet by the time they get out of the car, shifting in his seat, and he takes Jonny’s hand in the elevator and plays with his fingers.

“Let’s go to bed,” he says as soon as they get inside, tugging on Jonny’s hand—but Jonny pulls it away.

“You go,” he says. “I have a couple of emails to write, okay?”

“Oh,” Patrick says. He thinks about saying something else, but Jonny’s already walking away, and—it almost seems like he doesn’t want it. Like he doesn’t want Patrick.

Patrick knows that’s crazy. Jonny’s always wanted him. But he feels cold and kind of shaky as he crawls into bed alone. He hasn’t done that very often—almost never, since he and Jonny got together. But then, they’ve almost always had sex before they’ve gone to bed. This past week or so, Patrick’s been too freaked out to think much about it, but even then, Jonny’s gone to bed with him.

It’s really hard to fall asleep alone. Patrick thinks about texting Jonny, or—or just focusing on him really hard through their bond, and hoping that does something—but he doesn’t want to be pushy. It’s been an intense couple of weeks. If Jonny needs some space, Patrick has to give it to him. Besides, maybe if he lies awake long enough, Jonny will come join him, and then everything will be okay.

It takes a long time for him to fall into a fitful sleep, and when he does, Jonny still isn’t there.

***

He’s there in the morning, though, snugged up behind Patrick, and Patrick wakes up and breathes in his presence with relief. Nothing’s broken. Jonny is just where he should be, arm around Patrick, snuffling into his neck.

Maybe, he thinks, maybe if he starts something now—but Jonny mumbles into his neck, “Come on. Wanna go for a run before we get Jackie from the airport,” and Patrick’s too happy about being able to work out again to resist that, even if he does grumble a lot about the hour and stupid overcommitted exercise-aholics who don’t know how to sleep in.

Having Jackie around is so, so great. It’s only been a couple of months since he’s seen her, at all the Cup stuff, but when she drops her luggage and runs up to him outside the airport he sweeps her up in his arms and feels so much lighter than he did a moment before. It’s not the same as it would be if he had to go without Jonny for two months—that would maybe kill him—but Jackie’s a part of him, too, always has been, and his wolf is practically rumbling with contentment as she sits behind him in the car with her arms draped over his shoulders.

It’s a good few days. Too short, because she has a summer job to get back to, but they pack it full of cuddling, all three of them curled up together on the couch whenever they can pull Jonny in from a training schedule that’s starting to ramp up. Jackie likes to lie with her cheek on Patrick’s stomach, where she swears she can hear the baby’s heartbeat. Patrick doesn’t quite believe her, but he doesn’t hate the idea: that there’s this other living thing growing inside his body. He—he’s still not comfortable with it, entirely. But he doesn’t hate it.

He wishes Jonny seemed as comfortable with it.

It’s not that Jonny hasn’t been touching him. Jonny always touches him. Even before they were together, he was the person who touched Patrick the most, and he hasn’t really changed that. He still puts his hands all over Patrick whenever he can, pulls him up against his side when they’re watching TV, leans against his back while they cook. But whenever Patrick kisses him, Jonny keeps it chaste and pulls away after less than a minute. And they haven’t had sex in almost three weeks.

They’ve never gone that long without it. Patrick can count on one hand the number of times they’ve gone more than a day, and it’s all been when they’ve been at Patrick’s family’s house or someone’s been injured. Hell, he’ll even count that time Jonny twinged his shoulder and got pain killers and gave Patrick the world’s sloppiest high blowjob and passed out before he could get off himself. Even during the playoffs Jonny allowed them handjobs, on the rationale that it was tension release (even though Patrick pointed out multiple times that it was obviously just because Jonny couldn’t resist him even when there was playoff hockey on the line).

Jonny seems like he can resist him just fine now, though.

It makes sense that he wouldn’t do anything while Jackie’s there. It’s always a little sketch to have sex with another wolf in the house, since they can smell it and hear it better than a normal person could, and Jackie’s Patrick’s little sister. But on Friday, after they drop her off at the airport, Patrick’s thinking—but Jonny’s half asleep by the time Patrick’s done brushing his teeth. He just tucks Patrick into his side and drops off while Patrick lies there and tries not to think about Jonny’s cock, or why Jonny might not want to give it to him.

Normally, freaking out like that might make Patrick not want to have sex. That’s…not so much the case, right now.

He doesn’t know if it’s because it’s been so long, or because of the stupid pregnancy, but he doesn’t think he’s been this horny since after the Cup. He wants it, well, all the time, basically. His ass feels empty constantly. He runs a washcloth over his chest in the shower on Saturday morning, and that’s never felt crazy intense to him or anything, but now—the fabric catches on his nipples, just a little rough, and he’s suddenly hard and dripping and why won’t Jonny just fuck him already?

He thinks about jerking off in the shower. He could probably come in just a few strokes, the way he’s feeling. But he hasn’t really done that since he and Jonny got together. They were having sex so often that it never really came up—and now, even though they’re not, he feels like maybe it would be disloyal. Like he should have his alpha’s permission to do that.

It’s stupid. Patrick knows Jonny wouldn’t object to him jerking off. Especially if he doesn’t want to—but no, Patrick doesn’t want to think about that; doesn’t want to think about how Jonny doesn’t seem to want to fuck him anymore, isn’t attracted to him now that his body has a baby in it.

Well, that’s taken care of his erection.

He’s cranky later in the day as he waits for Dr. Roslin to show up. They’ve agreed that she should keep coming to Jonny’s building: it’s safer than the two of them being seen going to a doctor who specializes in wolves, and this way there aren’t any nurses or office staff who might be able to spill their secret.

It’s a little embarrassing, admitting to her that he didn’t go through with the abortion. But she has a very good non-judgy face. Jonny could probably use some lessons.

“Do you have any other questions for me?” she asks after she’s finished taking Patrick’s vitals and examining his stomach.

“Um. No,” he says. And then, as she’s packing up her things, “Yeah, actually. Is it—um—is there any reason that Jonny and I shouldn’t, um, would it be bad for us to—”

“Have intercourse?” she asks blandly.

He nods, face flaming.

“What you do with your partner is up to you,” she says. “But a healthy sex life is good for the baby. Even if you and your mate aren’t being active for some reason, you shouldn’t feel like you need to hold back on your own.”

Patrick can only nod and hope his face doesn’t actually catch on fire. So it’s not a safety issue. But he didn’t think that was why Jonny was holding back, anyway.

“What did she say?” Jonny asks later, springing out of the study as soon as she’s gone. They agreed that Patrick should have a private relationship with his doctor, but from the slightly manic look in Jonny’s eyes, Patrick can guess what it cost him to stay away.

“She put me on a restricted exercise routine,” Patrick says, because it’s true.

“Okay. Okay.” Jonny’s nodding. “And?” His eyes dart downward.

“And the baby is fine,” Patrick says, and Jonny wraps him up in his arms and presses his face against Patrick’s hair.

“Thank God,” he breathes. “Thank God.”

And Patrick…if this is what he gets right now, this devotion, this love, if this is what Jonny can give him, he’ll take it. He would be an idiot not to.

***

He’s not planning on taking the doctor’s advice. There’s still something that feels wrong about it, jerking off without Jonny there. Something half-there, incomplete.

The next morning, though, he wakes up and his nipples hurt. He ignores the dull ache through breakfast, and then Jonny leaves for some ice time, and his nipples start doing this little stabbing pain thing. Patrick hisses and presses against them to make them stop and—oh.

Oh. That was interesting.

He pushes in a little more, and oh, fuck. It’s like they have a line straight to his dick. He takes in a shuddery breath and circles his fingers, rolling the nubs around, and he’s hard, really hard, and was there a reason not to do this, again?

He still feels guilty as he gets up and goes toward the bedroom, but the insistent throb in his nipples makes it easier to overlook that. He strips down and lays a towel on the bed, because he can already tell that he’ll be dripping a lot by the end of this, and he lies down and puts his fingers on his nipples again.

Fuck, they’ve really never felt like this. Like—like they’re lighting him up all over, like he’s pressing on his dick instead of his chest. He scrapes his nails over them and oh, oh God, he was right about the towel. His ass is getting slick, hole going looser and wetter with each teasing swipe of his nails. He’s breathing hard, and each breath feels like it’s stoking the fire in his belly, making the next gulp of air taste hotter. And he still hasn’t touched anything aside from his nipples.

His cock is standing practically straight up, quivering with each breath. Patrick goes to put a hand on it—and stops, drops his hand to his thigh and squeezes for control. He’ll come way too fast if he does that, and this feels too good to be over. He wants to come buried on his own fingers, getting off just from his nipples and his ass.

His breath is coming quicker just thinking about that. He puts both hands back on his nipples and presses in, in, in, feels the ache build, and then when he can’t stand the emptiness anymore, he lifts one knee and slides a finger into his hole.

Oh yeah, that’s what he’s been missing these past few weeks: that delicious pressure filling his ass. He squeezes down on it and slides in another finger, then another until there’s finally (almost) enough fullness. He glides them in and out for a minute, nail scraping his nipple, and then he crooks them and digs into his prostate. It makes him gasp, back arching and hips rolling, and he does it a few more times: presses on those two places, his swollen nipple and that sweet spot in his ass, until he feels his whole body going loose and bright.

It’s so easy to imagine Jonny doing this. Jonny’s cock driving into his ass, Jonny’s teeth in his nipple. Patrick’s mate, fucking him like he wants him. It makes him shove his fingers inside even faster, and he pinches his nipple, hard, harder, feeling the pressure ramp up and his mouth drop open and everything go sweaty and frantic and, “Jonny,” he gasps out.

And that’s when Jonny sticks his head in the door and says, “Hey, have you seen my—”

He cuts off, probably because Patrick is frozen on the bed, naked with his fingers up his ass and about five seconds from coming.

There’s a long pause. Then Jonny says, his voice low and rough, “Fuck, Patrick, tell me to leave right now.”

Patrick can’t help it: he whines, high in his throat. It’s his mate, every part of Patrick knows it, and his mate isn’t happy with him. He doesn’t want to be over here, fucking Patrick like Patrick wants him to. But maybe—maybe if Patrick is really good—

He tips his head back and arches his back to show his neck and his stomach, a posture of submission. And he whines again.

“Oh my God, seriously,” Jonny says. He sounds really upset now, and the sound makes Patrick want to curl in on himself. “If you don’t tell me to leave, I’m going to—”

“What?” Patrick asks, too fast and too desperate.

“I’m going to fuck you,” Jonny grinds out, and _yes,_ Patrick’s wolf says, _yes, that,_ and he lifts his knees to show Jonny his ass. 

“Please,” he says, and Jonny curses, and then—yes, yes, his shirt is off, and his pants, and there’s Jonny’s cock, Jonny’s cock is hard, Jonny wants to fuck him—

“Oh my God, Patrick,” Jonny says, and his thumb traces over Patrick’s hole. Patrick mewls and clenches like he can suck him inside. Jonny’s so close to where he should be, fingers pressing on that slick, loose little bud, stroking over it and sending shivers up into Patrick’s gut.

“Please,” he says again, “please, I need—”

“Yeah.” Jonny’s voice is hoarse. “Yeah, Patrick, I’ll give it to you.”

But first he shoves his fingers into Patrick’s ass, three of them, and it’s not enough but it’s _so good._ Patrick arches into it and clamps down, panting and trying to fuck himself onto Jonny’s fingers the way he would onto his cock, just needing something.

“Jesus, you’re dripping,” Jonny says, and then he takes his fingers out Patrick lets out a sobbing gasp and says, “No, no,” but then Jonny’s hands are on his hips and his cock is nudging up against his hole and—

Jonny’s cock slides home, thick and solid, and Patrick rears back and howls.

It’s barely a moment before Jonny’s pulling out and slamming back in, over and over, just the way he should be, and Patrick’s so far gone that all he can do is hold onto the sheets and moan. Jonny’s cock drives into his slickness and hits his prostate, making Patrick dizzy and crazed and so, so lost.

“Yeah,” he hears himself saying, “yeah, yeah, come on, Jonny, _alpha,”_ and then Jonny’s spilling into his ass, come soaking into him, and Patrick is gone, spurting up his chest and onto his face and _Jonny just fucked him again, Jonny wants him._

His arms feel weak as he pulls Jonny toward him. Jonny collapses against him, sweat-soaked and smelling just right, and Patrick rubs his face all over Jonny’s neck before Jonny kisses him, open-mouthed and desperate.

“Oh my God,” Jonny says when they take a break from the kissing and are just rubbing all over each other again. “You have no idea how hard it was to keep from doing that this past week.”

“You—what?” Patrick says.

“You were just—oh my God, you were everywhere, and you smell so good right now,” Jonny says. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, but—ow! What was that for?” He pulls back and glares, because Patrick’s just punched him in the arm.

“You fucker,” Patrick says. “Do you know how crazy I was going, wondering why you weren’t fucking me?”

Jonny’s mouth drops open. “But—you didn’t want me to—”

Patrick frowns at him, because is Jonny crazy here? “I always want you to.”

“But.” Jonny looks kind of frantic. “No, but, like—after the thing. If I tried to touch you…you know, below the waist.” Jonny blushes a little because he’s a ridiculous prude even when they’re naked and wearing each other’s come. “You would go all tense.”

“I did not,” Patrick says. Then, “Well, uh, maybe I did right after,” he says, because he can remember how he felt about his stomach right after he found out, and anytime Jonny got near it— “But you, like, you kept not, and I thought maybe…”

“What?” Jonny asks.

Patrick turns his face into Jonny’s shoulder. “You didn’t want to?” he says, muffled.

_You didn’t want me,_ is what he means, and maybe Jonny hears it, because his hand strokes down Patrick’s side and closes on his ass cheek. “I was pretty much dying to,” he says, leaning in to nose at Patrick’s neck. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Patrick snorts. “It’s not like I wanted to fuck you if you didn’t want to fuck me,” he says, though he’s rolling his head to give Jonny more room to work on his neck, so the statement loses some of its punch. “And…” And this part is more embarrassing, makes Patrick want to squirm, because he’s a human, really; he’s an independent adult, and the wolf doesn’t make all his calls. But sometimes it’s insistent about certain things. “And that’s not…really my role,” he manages to say, and winces and bites his lip and fights the urge to roll away.

“Patrick.” Jonny pulls back to look at him. “Do you mean…you can’t start things? But you have, you do, all the time. I’m not—I’m not, like, making that up, am I? Because…”

“No, I can.” Patrick is definitely flushed now; he can feel the heat in his cheeks. “It’s just, like, sometimes it…feels wrong? Like, if we’re having a lot of sex, I can initiate it, fine, but if we’re not, and it seems like maybe you don’t want to…”

Jonny gets this really determined look in his eyes. “Hey. Listen to me.” His voice drops into the timbre that always makes Patrick shiver. “I want you,” he says, and he leans down, slow, and gets his teeth into Patrick’s neck, bites down a little and holds for a long moment. “I want to _fuck_ you,” he rasps out. “Like, all the time. It’s crazy, how much I want you.”

Patrick sucks in a sharp breath and feels his body going lax, ready. It hasn’t been that long since he came, but he can feel his dick twitching again.

“And I want you to tell me what you need,” Jonny says. “Always. Got it?”

Patrick nods. He feels the haziness of Jonny taking charge again, feels it like pleasure up and down his spine.

“What do you need?” Jonny asks.

“Your cock,” Patrick says, right away. That’s always the answer.

Jonny keeps looking at him, like he knows there’s more to it than that.

Patrick squirms again. He doesn’t want to say it, but Jonny told him to. “And…”

Jonny bites at his jaw. “And?”

“And.” Patrick’s starting to breathe hard again. “My…nipples,” he says, and a flush of embarrassment runs over his body.

Jonny sucks in a breath. “Yeah?” he says. He runs a finger lightly over the right one, and Patrick tips his head back and arches up into the touch. Jonny’s eyes sharpen. “Sensitive?”

Patrick can only whine in response, as Jonny’s finger presses in deeper. “Oh God, Pat,” Jonny says, sounding desperate, and he leans down and gets his mouth on the left one.

This is what Patrick was fantasizing about, Jonny’s mouth sucking on him, and the bolt of pleasure that shoots through him is even more intense than he expected. He cries out and surges up into the feeling, and Jonny rasps his tongue over the hard peak. Tongue, then teeth, and every touch and scrape sends an aching jolt to Patrick’s cock. It’s filling now, swelling to full hardness.

“More,” Patrick says. “More, I…” And Jonny switches his mouth to the right one and uses his thumb to press the left one down, over and over, rhythmic pulses that make Patrick’s insides shiver.

“I can’t,” Patrick says, not even sure what he’s saying. His breath is coming in pants. “You have to. Oh. Jonny.”

Jonny’s thumb speeds up on the left one, rougher and faster, and his tongue and teeth do the same thing to the other. He starts pulling and twisting both at the same time, and Patrick can feel the pulse of it in his cock, ramping higher and higher. His ass is leaking slick again.

“Yeah, like…oh, fuck, Jonny, I’m gonna…”

He’s thrashing on the sheets, Jonny working at each aching bud like—like a clit or something, and Patrick feels his muscles liquifying, and then Jonny _bites_ —

“Ah!” Patrick shouts, and he comes, untouched, ass empty, pleasure spiraling from those two bright points on his chest where Jonny’s still kneading and sucking.

Jonny pulls back and stares in astonishment. “Did you just…”

“Glargh,” is all Patrick can say, or something to that effect.

“Please say you want me to fuck you again right now,” Jonny says, voice low and desperate, and the sound of it makes Patrick’s cock spurt out a little bit more come.

Patrick doesn’t feel spent like he usually does after coming. His body is humming, wanting more, ass clenching on emptiness. “Be fucking mad at you if you don’t,” he says, and a moment later he’s sighing in relief as Jonny’s cock slides into his hole. It just feels so good there, the thing his body was missing, the thing he should never be without.

“Why is this so good every fucking time,” Jonny says, full of wonder, as he pulls out and thrusts back in a little, smooth on Patrick’s slick and his come from before. It’s almost too much, Patrick’s walls too sensitive, but he rides the sensation and rolls his hips into it.

“That’s right,” he says to Jonny. He feels dazed, lost in this haze of heat and the shimmering pleasure of Jonny’s cock scraping against his hole. “Might not be—might not be pregnant enough yet. Better fix that.”

Jonny swears, and his hips jerk faster. “Swear to God, Pat, gonna kill me.”

“Yeah.” Pat runs his hands over the sweat-slick skin of Jonny’s shoulders. “Come in me. Put your— _ah_. Put your babies in me.”

Now Jonny’s the one making strangled noises, and his cock pounds into Patrick, slamming his prostate over and over. Patrick’s own cock is hard—maybe never went soft—and it shouldn’t be at all possible for him to come again, not so soon after coming twice, but when he runs his hand over it it’s throbbing and full and his whole body feels wound up in pleasure like maybe he hasn’t come yet at all. He shakes with the force of Jonny’s thrusts, and each one shoves him further into the space where there’s nothing but pleasure, nothing but the slide of Jonny’s cock in his ass, and he tightens his hand and puts his other one up to his chest to press on a swollen nipple.

Jonny’s barely holding it together, from the look of it, mouth open and chest heaving, but he looks down at Patrick with astonishment. “Is that—are you going to—”

“Make me come again,” Patrick says, “make me _pregnant,”_ and Jonny’s hips stutter, jabbing at his prostate and making him cry out, and then it’s there: a third orgasm, bigger than the second one, engulfing him and making him work his ass around Jonny as every part of him throbs with pleasure and impossible amounts of come shoot onto his chest.

“Gonna,” Jonny says, “gonna kill me,” and then he’s shooting too, inside of Patrick, hot and slick.

It takes a while for Patrick to come down from this one. He lies there, dazed and limp with pleasure, as Jonny’s body curls around him and his cock softens in Patrick’s ass. He just—wants to be like this always. Never wants anything else. Just Jonny’s cock in his ass, cradled in Patrick’s slick and Jonny’s come and—

“Oh my God,” he says. “Oh my God, fuck, Jonny, I’m so sorry.”

Jonny startles a little, raising his head from where he was pressed against Patrick’s shoulder. “What?”

“The—oh my God,” Patrick says. The embarrassment is sick and hot inside of him. “The things I said. I can’t believe—fuck.”

“Are you kidding?” Jonny props himself up a little, looms over him in a way that makes the anxiety in Patrick’s chest drop a little. “Patrick. That was just—the hottest thing I’ve ever—like, ever.” He presses a slow kiss to Patrick’s mouth. “That was _so hot.”_

Patrick feels his wolf preening under the praise. “Really?”

“Also, in case you didn’t notice, you just came three times with, like, no refractory period,” Jonny says. “So I’m thinking this pregnancy things has its perks.”

“Mm,” Patrick says, and Jonny strokes over one of his nipples again, and—wow, he was really not wrong about Patrick’s lack of refractory period. Maybe they should buy a dildo.

***

They start having so much sex after that. They can’t spend all their time in bed, because Jonny still has to train and go to a million meetings and events and promotional gigs. But there basically aren’t any mornings where they get out of bed without both of them coming first, and Patrick’s found that a great way to greet Jonny when he comes home from something is to array himself in the most interesting pose possible.

It also distracts Patrick from the thing where _he_ isn’t doing any of the meetings or events or promotional shit. Brisson’s been giving him his marching orders, and most of them are to sit tight and not go out in public. He still sounds a little dazed whenever they’re on the phone, like he’s not sure how he ended up handling a situation like this, but Patrick can deal with that: he’s a little dazed about it himself, most of the time.

And at least Brisson hasn’t suggested that he’s a danger to the people around him.

Patrick hasn’t talked to Stan since the meeting at the UC. He’s been trying not to think about it, actually. It’s not going all that well, especially with so little to distract him. The team’s made a couple of publicity moves, which Brisson has told him about: “leaks” about a lower-body injury, something that might require surgery. It’s not a bad cover story. But Patrick doesn’t want to think about what else might have been said in the meetings where his case was discussed. Jonny comes back angry sometimes, mouth pressed into a thin line, and that’s all Patrick needs to know about it.

When that happens, Patrick kind of expects Jonny to take him roughly, to take out his anger through fucking, but usually that’s when Jonny’s the slowest and sweetest. He kisses Patrick long and deep like he’s precious, like he wants to give Patrick all the kindness the world isn’t, and Patrick is so lucky to have him.

***

It’s the middle of August when Patrick notices that he has a belly.

He’s standing in front of the mirror brushing his teeth, shirtless, because why would he need a shirt when Jonny’s going to come back from making coffee and fuck him pretty soon, when he turns sideways and…that’s not how his profile used to look.

It’s nothing huge. There’s just a little bit of roundness, like he’s taking a deep breath, except that he’s not breathing in right now. He sucks in his gut, and it’s still there. Rounded. Solid.

Patrick can hear his own pulse in his ears. It’s real. It’s visible. He could hide it with a shirt if he wanted to, but soon that will change. It’s only going to get bigger.

When Jonny comes in a minute later, Patrick’s leaning over with his hands on the counter, trying to breathe through it. Jonny looks a little frantic, like he hurried here—because of course the stupid bond would tell him how Patrick’s feeling now and not two weeks ago when all Patrick wanted was for Jonny to fuck him stupid. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Patrick says, though he knows he doesn’t sound it. He straightens up and tries to look it. But his eyes go to the spot in the mirror, the spot where his stomach bulges out—

Maybe Jonny follows his gaze, because he goes still. Then he moves up behind Patrick, his chest to Patrick’s back, and slides a hand over his stomach.

“That’s our baby in there,” Jonny says in a low voice, and Patrick lets out a great gasp, because it’s wrong, it’s so wrong, his body is not—his body is for _hockey._ He should be on the ice by this point in the summer. He should have been on the ice weeks ago. His arms and legs are full of coiled energy all the time now, energy that wants to be spent on training that he’s not allowed to do anymore. This is wrong; it’s a waste.

But Jonny’s standing behind him, his hand pressed over their baby.

It’s too much, and Patrick can’t—he presses back against Jonny, because when he feels like this, what he wants is contact. The stabilizing contact of a whole pack, ideally, but just Jonny is enough for him. Jonny, who wraps his other arm around Patrick’s chest and bends his head to place his mouth against the pulse point on Patrick’s neck. It’s not about sex, and for once that’s fine: Jonny just holds him, safe and contained, until Patrick’s breathing goes back to normal and he feels like he can stand on his own again.

***

It’s weird, putting on weight. For Patrick’s whole career he’s been trying unsuccessfully to do it: chugging protein shakes and forcing down pasta and chicken even when he’s really not hungry and then looking in frustration at the trainers’ scale. Now, though, the weight packs on easily, and he’s always hungry for things like pickles and coleslaw and strawberry ice cream. Jonny says the people at Whole Foods have started giving him weird looks.

Patrick can’t leave the house much anymore. A jacket can still cover things up, but he’s getting bigger every day. Sharpy’s in town, though, and Patrick spends some time over at his house before the season starts, even though Sharpy is a lunatic who thinks that other people might actually want to help him write his thank you notes.

He’s over there on the first Saturday in September when it all goes to shit. Sharpy’s getting snacks for a video game marathon—and, Patrick swears to God, if he comes back with a pile of stationery, Patrick’s going to shove it somewhere Sharpy will really not be happy with—when someone knocks on the door. Seabs’s voice calls out, “Hey, home invasion,” and Duncs says, “We brought beer,” and Patrick—

Patrick’s standing there in the middle of Sharpy’s living room with his stomach bulging out of the front of a T-shirt and nowhere to go.

Panic. He feels it in the tips of his fingers and toes and the fuzziness in his brain. He needs to get out of there, and his car is out front, so maybe if he dashes out the back of the house and circles around—

He goes for the door into the kitchen, but just as he’s about to go through it, Sharpy appears in it with a tray full of veggies. “Hey, did I hear Duncs and Seabs—”

“Get out of the way,” Patrick says, shoving at him, too frantic to care about rudeness right now, but there are footsteps coming into the living room behind him and it’s too late.

“Hey, Peeks, didn’t expect you here,” Duncs says. “Two Patricks for the price of one.”

“Yeah, we’re cheap like that,” Sharpy says, or at least Patrick thinks that’s what he says, because his ears are filling up with white noise. Seabs is looking at the front of his shirt now, kind of frowning, and any moment, Duncs’ eyes are going to go to the same place, and why is there so little air in here?

“Hey,” Seabs says slowly, “is that…”

And Patrick breaks and runs.

Sharpy’s come into the living room a bit by now, so there’s a gap between him and the doorway that Patrick can just bolt through. He slams through the back door and around the side of the house, and he hears, “Peeks! Hold up!” but he doesn’t stop. He scrabbles with the lock on Sharpy’s fancy trellis gate and is almost at the car when the front door bursts open and Sharpy comes out.

“Fucking hell, you’re fast for a pregnant guy,” Sharpy says.

Patrick’s already fumbling with his keys. “Don’t get in my way,” he says, and he hates the shake in his own voice. “I have to—I can’t—”

“Do you really—they’re not going to have a problem with it,” Sharpy says, and that’s so ridiculous that Patrick just has to stare at him. “What? It’s the team, come on.”

“Maybe not—maybe Seabs would be okay,” Patrick says. “But Duncs, he’s—look, you know how he feels—”

Sharpy frowns, like this is surprising to him, like this is confusing. “Do I?”

“Just get out of my fucking way,” Patrick says, because if Sharpy doesn’t remember, Patrick’s not going to enlighten him. And if he doesn’t get out of here in the next twenty seconds Duncs and Seabs are going to come out to see what’s going on, and then he’ll have to face them.

“Fine, fine,” Sharpy says, stepping back, “but are you sure you’re okay to—” But Patrick’s already getting in the car, forcing the key into the ignition and peeling out of there.

He’s only half-present on the drive home. The guys—the guys know. They _saw._ They know now, what he is.

It’s going to be like Stan.

By the time he gets home, he’s shaking. Jonny takes one look at his face and says, “What the fuck happened at—” and Patrick walks straight up to him and into his arms.

“Sleep,” he says, and Jonny doesn’t say anything else, just bundles him off to the bedroom where he can lie down in the dark, cuddled in Jonny’s embrace, and forget for a few hours.

When he wakes up, it’s because someone’s pounding on the door.

“What the fuck,” Jonny says, grumbling himself awake. Patrick’s groggy, trying to come out of a murky dream—and then he remembers what happened that afternoon, and he sits bolt upright, cold sweat on his forehead.

“We shouldn’t answer it,” he says, even though he knows it’s crazy. He can’t hide in the blankets forever.

Jonny gives him a weird look. “We have to at least see who it is.” And the idea makes Patrick’s stomach shrivel up cold inside him, but if he didn’t go to the door with Jonny he’d be the biggest wimp ever, so he trails behind him.

The pounding is louder in the foyer. “It’s Duncs,” Jonny says, looking through the peephole, and Patrick barely has time to say, “Maybe you shouldn’t,” before Jonny’s unlocking the deadbolt and opening the door.

He’s not going to—it’s not going to be like one of those old stories, the ones from the 1920s or whatever, where—people don’t do things like that anymore. But that doesn’t stop Patrick from taking an instinctive step back as Duncs comes in.

He looks a little wild-eyed. “Kaner,” he says, breathing kind of hard, maybe from all the pounding on the door. “Sorry, I—you weren’t answering your phone, and—”

“What are you doing here, man?” Jonny asks, an edge to his voice, because it’s probably obvious that something weird is going on here.

“I’m so sorry,” Duncs says again. His eyes are fixed on Patrick. He takes another step forward, and Patrick moves back, but then Duncs—Duncs falls to his knees, he actually falls to his knees, right on the wood floor of Jonny’s foyer. “I didn’t know. You have to believe me.”

This…isn’t actually making any sense. “What? What do you mean, you didn’t you know?” Patrick asks. He’s pressed against the door of Jonny’s coat closet, trying not to be actively freaked out.

“That you’re a…” Duncs’ eyes cut over to Jonny, as if there’s any way Jonny wouldn’t know what Patrick is. “About your…thing. I had no idea.”

“Obviously.” Patrick shoots a glance at Jonny, who looks just as confused. “I didn’t think—why would I think you knew?”

“No, but—” Duncs looks physically pained that he’s not getting his point across here. “I would never have said those things. If I’d known.”

Ah. Patrick has some idea of where this is going now. “You’d just have thought them, huh?” he asks, extracting himself from between Duncs and the closet door, moving around to the side.

Duncs pivots to follow him. “What? No! You’re—you’re on my team, I would never think—when Sharpy told us—”

“Sharpy told you?” Jonny asks, suddenly fierce.

“No, Duncs and Seabs came by—it was a whole thing,” Patrick says.

“I don’t want you to think I would do that,” Duncs says desperately. He’s still on his knees on the floor. “I would never think that kind of thing about you.”

“Just other wolves, is that right?” Patrick says. His heart is beating fast.

Duncs looks confused. “No, I—what?”

“It’s okay to think that kind of thing about other wolves,” Patrick says. “Just not me, because you know me.”

“No, I mean—you’re not like—”

“Not like other wolves,” Patrick finishes. He really wants to take a step back, away, from Duncs, but instead he takes a step closer. Duncs flinches back a little—not in the face of the wolf, Patrick’s pretty sure, but out of confusion. “Look at me, man,” Patrick says. He spreads his arms out, and if they’re shaking, he tries not to notice. “I’m a wolf. I’m a pregnant omega wolf. I’m not, like, an exception. I’m not less violent or more human than other wolves. Hell, I play hockey, so I’m probably more violent.”

“That would make more sense if you were better at checking,” Jonny murmurs, and Patrick huffs a quick laugh.

Duncs just looks more lost. “I didn’t mean—”

“I’m pretty sure you did,” Patrick says. He’s still breathing fast, from the adrenaline of saying these things. “But my baby sister is a wolf. Do you think she’s dangerous, or freakish, just because you don’t know her?”

“No, I…no.” Duncs looks so pitiful that Patrick feels bad for him. Jonny comes up behind him and claps a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, man,” Jonny says. “It’s all right. But maybe you should go now, okay?”

Patrick does like that idea—of getting Duncs out of their house so he can collapse again. But Duncs does still look so pathetic. “Or you could stay for dinner if you wanted,” Patrick says, and Duncs’ whole face brightens.

“Really?” he asks.

“I hope you know this means you’re making actual dinner,” Jonny says in Patrick’s ear as Duncs goes by them into the kitchen, happier now.

Patrick just smirks. That’s what takeout is for.

When he goes to get his phone, he has a bunch of missed calls from Duncs and two texts from Seabs. _Sorry in advance for whatever Duncs is about to do,_ the first one says, and the second one is just, _Congrats on the baby, btw._

Patrick smiles. And then he sits down on the edge of the bed until his legs stop feeling wobbly. It’s not okay yet—not with Duncs, probably not with the rest of the team if they end up finding out. But maybe…maybe it can be better than he thought.


	5. Chapter 5

The beginning of the season is the worst. It’s usually Patrick’s favorite time of the year—well, except for playoffs, and Christmas, and his birthday, and also Jonny’s birthday, but the beginning of the season has always been right up there with the best. It’s when he gets back on the ice, when he stretches all the muscles he built up over the summer, when real life starts again.

This year, real life is starting without him.

“Wish you could come with me,” Jonny says when he’s about to head out the door for the first morning of training camp. 

Patrick snorts. His stomach is now something he can’t hide even with the loosest T-shirt. “I’m in the middle of my second trimester. Pretty sure someone might notice that, if I went in and sat in the stands.”

The news outlets have been running with the story that Patrick has some kind of major injury. ESPN quotes Q as speculating that he might not be ready to skate for training camp, and Patrick wants to laugh. Only a little, though, because later on in the article they quote Stan saying that you never know how these things will turn out.

He hasn’t heard from Stan since their meeting in early August. Q’s checked in a few times, and so have some other front office folks—the ones who are in the know—but nothing from Stan.

“The team misses you a lot,” Jonny says after the first day of training camp. Then he shows Patrick the card Sharpy made for him and had all the guys sign, with glitter all over it and big bubble letters that say, _So sorry about your serious medical condition!_

“I can’t believe no one called him on how ridiculous this is,” Patrick says.

“Sharpy does a good deadpan,” Jonny says.

The thing Patrick’s trying not to think about is what happens when training camp is over. He knows lots of wives and girlfriends have to deal with it: having their hockey player significant others go off on road trips and leave them alone. Patrick’s been luckier than most, being able to travel with Jonny when they’re both playing. And (if they let him; fucking hell, if they let him) he’ll get to travel with them again in the spring. He can handle a few months of Jonny being gone a couple of nights a week. He can handle that.

If his stomach feels a little twisted the night before Jonny leaves for Tampa, well, it’s been doing that a lot.

“Hey, I have something for you,” Jonny says while they’re lying around watching TV before bed.

Patrick was just getting really comfortable, on his side with Jonny’s hand stroking over his belly the way he’s started doing lately, but he’s never going to say no to presents. “Gimme,” he says.

Jonny cuffs him lightly and gets up and comes back with a velvety bag. He looks shy all of a sudden. “It’s for when I’m gone,” he says.

Patrick pulls at the drawstring and opens the bag to reveal—“Oh, fuck,” he says.

It’s a plug, heavy and smooth and curved and large in his palm. “Fuck, Jonny,” he says again, and he climbs onto Jonny’s lap and starts kissing him, one hand wrapped around the cool thickness of the plug.

They don’t end up doing anything with the plug that night, because they get kind of distracted by seeing how many times Patrick can come in a row while Jonny’s fucking him (four, it turns out, though Patrick thinks they’re not trying hard enough yet). But the next day before he leaves for the plane, Jonny fucks him nice and slow and then, when he pulls out, he slides the plug in in place of his cock before any of his come can dribble out.

Patrick moans at the new pressure against his walls. He’s just come twice, and he’s lying limp and sweaty on the bed. But he bets he if adjusts the plug just a bit—

“Ah,” he cries out, because there, it’s pressing against his prostate. He feels his cock start to fill again.

Jonny’s hovering over him. “Okay, I really need to get in the shower,” he says, but it’s another minute before he tears himself away, leaving Patrick still on the bed, nudging the plug against his prostate.

Patrick doesn’t have to be anywhere, so he starts stroking along his cock again, timing it with the little nudges he’s giving the plug. He switches his hand to his chest and digs at a nipple, clenching around the plug in place of the nudges he was giving it, and—

“Holy damn,” Jonny says from the bathroom doorway, and that’s enough to push Patrick over the edge, spurting onto his chest and clenching down around Jonny’s come still inside him.

He looks lazily over in Jonny’s direction. “Leaving?” he asks him.

It takes Jonny a long minute to answer. “Yes,” he says finally. “Yes, I am.”

It’s another couple of minutes, and several long kisses, before he finally makes it out the door.

Patrick’s used to Jonny being gone for long stretches of the day. But it’s different, knowing he won’t be back that night. The plug helps a little. Patrick basically doesn’t take it out, though that makes it awkward when he forgets that he has a doctor’s appointment and has to run into the bathroom and take the plug out before he lets Dr. Roslin in the door. But he puts it back in when she’s gone, and it makes him feel snug and secure.

It also makes him want to jerk off a lot. Like, all the time. “Seven,” he says to Jonny when Jonny calls after their game (the Blackhawks lost).

“Huh?” Jonny says.

“The number of orgasms I’ve had today,” Patrick says, stretching around the plug.

“Fuck,” Jonny breathes, and there’s the sound of his zipper going down, and Patrick’s count really quickly jumps to eight.

It’s still lonely going to bed, though, and when Jonny comes back the next day, they spend a long time curled up together on the couch, not fucking, not watching anything, just holding each other while Patrick breathes Jonny’s scent in deep.

He’s just getting sleepy, Jonny’s arms and his restless night combining to pull him under, when he jerks and says, _“Oh.”_

Jonny startles against him. “What? Are you okay?”

Patrick’s silent for a moment, feeling things out, because _that_ was new. But maybe it was indigestion, or Jonny shifting against him. “I think maybe I—oh. Oh my God.” He sits up and scrambles for Jonny’s hand and shoves it against his stomach. “Jonny, can you feel—”

He sees the moment Jonny feels it, because his eyes go wide. “Patrick, was that—is that our—”

“It’s kicking,” Patrick says, and he’s grinning, tipping his head against Jonny’s shoulder and holding both their hands to that spot where they can feel their baby’s foot thumping against the skin.

“Oh my God,” Jonny whispers.

It’s real. Patrick doesn’t think he knew it was real until this very moment. A real little person growing inside of him.

“Just remember, soccer isn’t as cool as hockey,” Jonny says to Patrick’s stomach, and Patrick snorts, and Jonny rolls him over and kisses him.

“Jonny,” Patrick says after they’ve been kissing for a while and he’s breathing hard.

Jonny skims his lips over Patrick’s cheek. “Yeah?”

It’s shivery—all Jonny’s touches are shivery, hot and good. “I wanted to ask you something.”

Jonny’s breath is hot against his cheekbone, coming in pants. “Yeah?”

Patrick arches a little, pressing the roundness of his stomach against Jonny’s cock. “Can you buy me some strawberry ice cream?” he whispers.

Jonny curses and jerks away, and Patrick laughs and hauls him back in.

Jonny does buy him strawberry ice cream. A couple of hours later.

***

“So,” Dr. Roslin says during one visit in early October. “How long has it been since you last changed?”

Patrick’s not sure what she means at first; she’s just finished measuring his belly, and he thinks maybe she means that, but that’s a stupid question, so— “Oh,” he says. “Um.” And then he tries to think, because, God, when was it?

“I don’t need the exact day,” she says. “But going by how weak your scent is, I’m guessing it’s been more than a month.”

Patrick laughs before he can stop himself. “Sorry,” he says. “Sorry, it’s just—yeah. It’s been more than a month.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “More than six months?”

For some reason he doesn’t want to admit it. He’s not sure why; this is something he’s worked hard for, after all, his lack of scent. “I guess it was…two thousand six,” he says, and she actually goes _white._

“Patrick,” she says, and for a second he thinks he’s going to need to get her, like, smelling salts, whatever those are. “That’s unheard of.”

“I know,” he says. “It’s just that, it’s been really important, with—”

“No,” she says. “I’m telling you, that’s medically unheard of. There was someone a few years ago who hadn’t transformed in two years, and he was studied. Scientifically.”

“Oh,” he says. “I mean, it was—it was for hockey.”

She looks at him like maybe that isn’t as good an explanation as Patrick knows it is. “I asked because I would have expected to see a little more development by now. One cause of slower fetal growth can be insufficient lupine hormones in the blood.”

Patrick goes cold. He wraps his hands around his stomach before he can even think of it. “But—I can’t,” he says. “If I transform, I’ll smell of—everyone will know. I can’t do that.”

She looks at him for a while, steady, concerned. “I can’t tell you what to do,” she says. “And a week here or there likely won’t make a difference. But I will tell you that if you care about your family’s health, you should give it serious thought.”

Patrick’s on their bed, curled around a pillow, when Jonny comes back from practice. “I have to transform,” he says as soon as Jonny walks in the door, and Jonny says, “Huh?”

Patrick explains it all, more or less, and then Jonny’s eyes go dark and he climbs onto the bed to wrap his arms around Patrick. “You should do whatever you have to to be safe,” he says. “But…if you’re not going to be able to leave the house for a while anyway…”

Patrick’s thought of that. The problem is—the problem is that he wants it. Every time he thinks about it, about turning into a wolf, it sparks something wild, way down deep. Something that’s longing for four legs and an open path to run. Something that wants to brush up against Jonny with fur, not skin.

“I don’t know if I could give it up,” he says. “If I started.”

Jonny makes a noise, and his arm slides around Patrick’s back.

“All I want to do is go back to playing hockey,” Patrick says into Jonny’s chest.

“You will,” Jonny says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “That’s where you belong, on the ice. With me.”

It won’t be where he belongs if this story gets out. “What if they don’t want me back?” Patrick whispers.

Jonny slides down, so that they’re face to face. “Then we’ll fight and we’ll fight until the whole world burns,” he says, and fuck. Patrick’s never loved anyone more.

***

“I don’t know what to do, you know?” he says to Jackie on the phone a couple of days later. Jonny’s due back from Colorado any minute, and Patrick’s stretched out on their bed, waiting (clothed; he’s not going to talk to his sister naked).

“Seems like it’s pretty obvious,” she says.

“Yeah, but.” She’s always been more comfortable than him with the idea of people knowing what they are. But then, she doesn’t have the spotlight he has. “If I smell like it. I won’t be able to hide anymore.”

“Be pretty hard to hide with a baby anyhow,” she says.

“There are other places I could have gotten a baby.” He’s thought this through. They could say that it’s from an ex, or a cousin, though an ex is more scandalous and therefore probably more believable. No one seems to have noticed that he’s living at Jonny’s yet, so they might not notice if he’s raising his baby there, either.

“But, Patty,” she says. “Do you really want to hide forever?”

Yes. Yes, that is exactly what he wants. “You don’t know how people will look at me.”

“You think no one’s ever looked at me that way?” she asks, and—

“Who,” he says. “Fuck, Jackie, who—”

“No one important,” she says. “But it happens, you know it does. The important thing is that you can’t let them make you feel bad about who you are.”

He remembers what he said to Duncs, a few weeks ago. How he defended wolves as a whole. It’s harder to believe it than it is to say it, sometimes.

“I’m scared,” he says, admits, and he wishes she were there to hug him, because her humming at him over the phone is just not the same.

There’s the sound of a key in the door then, and thank God, because Patrick could really use a hug right now. “Got to go, Jacks, Jonny’s back,” he says, getting up and going into the foyer, ready to fall against Jonny’s body, but he stops, because—it’s not Jonny.

It’s Jonny’s mom.

Patrick freezes in the entrance to the foyer. She’s lugging a suitcase over the threshold. She calls something out in French, and then she turns and sees Patrick and she freezes, too.

Fuck. Patrick’s only wearing an undershirt and sweats, and that’s not nearly enough to disguise the roundness of his belly.

“Patrick,” she says. “How nice to see you.”

“Hi, Andrée,” he says weakly.

“We were so sorry to hear about your…injury.” But her eyes have trained on his stomach, and Patrick wants to sink into the floorboards.

He doesn’t know how much Jonny’s told his parents. He knows they know they’re together—but early on, when they’d just gotten together, Jonny had said, “So, should I tell my family, or,” and Patrick had gone cold and whispered, “No, please no,” and so he doesn’t think they know anything else.

Based on the way Andree’s eyes are stuck on his belly, they definitely didn’t know about the pregnancy.

“Car’s parked,” Bryan says, coming in the door with his own bag, and then he takes in the two of them standing like statues and he stops, too. Patrick watches his eyes roam over them and sees the moment they land on Patrick’s belly.

“Jonny should be back soon,” Patrick says.

“Ah,” Bryan says. His eyes are still stuck on Patrick’s stomach. “So, how’ve you been?”

Patrick should think the answer to that would be obvious, but he’s spared answering because just then, Jonny actually does get home. He steps into the doorway, looking surprised to see it open, and then pulls up short when he sees his parents.

“Mom, Dad, what are you doing here?” he asks.

“We came to see your home opener,” Andrée says, sounding a little dazed. “But…” Her eyes cut over to Patrick.

Jonny follows her gaze, and Patrick sees the flinch. The moment he realizes the full extent of the awkwardness. Patrick knows it isn’t directed at him, knows it’s just about the situation, but still, it makes something within him shrivel.

Then Jonny’s crossing to him, and the look in his isn’t defensive or scared at all—it’s…warm. Glowing. “Mom, Dad,” he says. “You’ve met my partner.” He steps up next to Patrick and slides one arm around his waist and puts his other hand on Patrick’s stomach. “He’s carrying our baby.”

And—and Patrick doesn’t know what the Toewses’ faces are doing right then, because he’s too busy looking at Jonny’s. At the love there. At the pride, like Patrick’s something he wants to show off. Like being able to tell the most important people in his life about this is a gift.

Dinner that night is awkward—not awful, but the Toewses are clearly thrown by this. But Patrick almost doesn’t care. Every time Jonny’s eyes land on him, he feels warm all the way through. Wants to lie down and bare his belly for more of his alpha’s approval.

That night, when Jonny’s parents are in the guest room and Jonny shuts their bedroom door, Patrick takes a deep breath and says, “Don’t freak out, okay?”

“Hm?” Jonny says, still turning away from the door, and then Patrick shifts.

It’s been so long since he’s done this. It feels different now, too: shifting with a baby in his belly, with his internal organs rearranged. But the wolf’s body knows how to accommodate this.

Patrick’s mass shifts, legs and arms changing shape, fur sprouting from his skin and teeth growing long and sharp. Fifteen seconds later, he’s standing on the ground on his own four paws, the ones he hasn’t stood on since the summer before Juniors.

It always takes something out of him, the transformation. But being like this, in this form, it gives something back, too: an energy, a lightness that makes him want to jump, to dance on the coiled power of his wolf legs.

His sense of smell is so much stronger in this form. He can smell Jonny’s surprise. The way it’s shading off, not into terror, but…amazement?

He gives in to the urge to dance and bounds up to Jonny a little. “Holy crap, Pat,” Jonny says.

Patrick can’t answer. But he knows how to ask for his alpha’s approval: he flops down onto his back and bares his stomach, his heavy stomach where their cub is incubating, and he tips his head back to show his throat and whines.

There’s a moment where Jonny doesn’t do anything. Then he crouches down and touches a hand to the soft fur on Patrick’s belly. Patrick wriggles with pleasure at the touch, and it comes again, a firmer stroke.

Yeah. That means his alpha likes him. Patrick feels happiness bubbling up inside of him.

Another hand, now, stroking Patrick’s head. “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” Jonny says, and that’s even better. Jonny thinks he’s beautiful. Patrick’s pleased him. Jonny’s hand moves down to Patrick’s throat, scritches at it, and oh, that’s wonderful, that’s—

Patrick rubs up against Jonny, wanting more of all of this, and Jonny laughs and says, “Okay, you want to cuddle, we can do that. Get up on the bed for me, okay?”

Patrick can do that. He likes doing what his alpha asks of him. He bounds up onto the bed, and Jonny follows a minute later, just in his underwear, all that skin that Patrick can wriggle against when Jonny lies down next to him. His alpha is warm, so warm, and Patrick nuzzles against his neck.

“That was really good, what you did just now,” Jonny murmurs. His hand strokes down Patrick’s back. “Really brave. Brave for our cub, right?”

Patrick whines happily. Jonny thinks he’s doing good for their cub. He’s a good mate.

“We’re going to have such a good pack, aren’t we?” Jonny says, and that’s such a bright thought that Patrick has to shiver happily all over and slip into sleep.

When he wakes up in the morning, he’s back in his human skin. That will usually happen, during the night, if he hasn’t been in wolf form much lately. Jonny’s still wrapped around him, though, and he remembers the simple happiness of being the wolf and wisps of dreams about running under the moon.

He doesn’t feel panicked like he’d expect to. Just…peaceful. He puts his hand over his belly and wonders if the baby feels happier, too.

Jonny stirs next to him. Patrick puts his mouth next to Jonny’s ear. “I hear I’d make a pretty good mate,” he whispers, and Jonny’s eyes blink open. He smiles at Patrick.

“That’s what I hear, too,” he mumbles sleepily.

“Guess you’d better get me pregnant, then,” Patrick says, and he’s not embarrassed anymore about the way that makes his hole slick or Jonny’s eyes dark and hungry.

It’s amazing how different his transformation makes everything feel, in the days afterward. Patrick had forgotten how good it felt to be the wolf: how it made everything seem clearer and easier. Even now, with Jonny’s parents in the house looking tentative every time they talk to him, Patrick doesn’t feel it the way he thinks he would have before. It’s like there’s something else now that’s keeping him in balance.

He tells Jackie about it the next night, and she’s so excited. She wants Patrick to transform and stay on the phone with her, so he does, the two of them listening to each other breathe until Patrick wants to go to sleep but doesn’t want to change back, and he whines at Jonny until he takes the phone and says, “Sorry, Jackie, but Pat has to go. He’ll call you tomorrow, though.” And then he gets to curl up with Jonny and go to sleep while Jonny scritches behind his ears.

Sharpy finds it hilarious when he finds out. He and Abby are over more often these days, sometimes with Duncs and Seabs, now that it’s really impossible for Patrick to leave the house. Patrick lets it slip that he finally went into his wolf form, and Sharpy bugs him for like two hours until Patrick finally gives in.

“Okay,” Patrick says, “but if anyone tries to play fetch, I am done.” Then he gets to see the look of glee on Sharpy’s face and Seabs’ yelp as he grows fur in front of them.

They don’t play fetch, but they do scratch behind his ears and let him snuggle up to them, and for a while Patrick forgets to be jealous that they’re still playing hockey when he can’t.

***

Jonny’s parents stay for a few days. It’s awkward, and Patrick can’t really blame them for that: this can’t be what they were expecting for Jonny, a partner who’s male and pregnant and a wolf. Patrick steers clear of them as much as he can and tries not to imagine what conversations they’re having about him when he’s not there.

Andrée seeks him out, though, on the third day. Patrick’s in the weight room, ostensibly doing the limited exercises he’s allowed to but mostly trying to stay out of the way until Jonny and his parents leave for lunch. He startles when Andrée knocks on the door.

“Come in,” he says, because, well, he’s not rude.

She slips inside. “I wanted to thank you for having us in your home,” she says.

Patrick puts down the weight in his hand a little too quickly. “It’s not my—” he starts to say, and stops himself.

She sits down on the weight bench across from him and smoothes her skirt. “It clearly is your home,” she says.

It’s pointed—warmly, not harshly, but still. Patrick’s having a hard time looking at her. He’s made it into his home; he knows that, and isn’t sure how she feels about it.

“My dear,” she says. “I hope you know how excited Bryan and I are about the child you’re bringing into this family.”

Now Patrick does look up, in surprise. He has to say something, but all his words are caught in his throat. “Really?” he finally manages, and there’s almost no sound to it.

She laughs. “Of course. We always hoped Jonny would give us grandchildren.”

Oh fuck. Patrick’s going to cry. In front of his sort-of-mother-in-law.

She lets him sit in silence, her hand on his shoulder, while he pulls himself together. It’s not the kind of effusive touch another wolf would give him, but it’s a connection, acceptance, and it doesn’t do anything to get rid of the lump in his throat.

“We may not always—understand,” she says after a while. “The way things work for you. There’s a lot you might have to explain to us. But I want you to know that you’ll always be welcome in our home, and in our family.”

“Thank you,” he gets out, and if he has to dry a few tears on his t-shirt, she’s kind enough not to mention it.

“They like me,” he whispers to Jonny when they’re in bed that night.

Jonny laughs. “Of course they do,” he says. “Did you think—oh.” He shifts a little so he can see Patrick’s face. “Sweetheart. I would never have let them stay here if I thought they wouldn’t—if I thought they’d have a problem with you.”

Patrick’s silent. He sort of doesn’t get why they _don’t_ have a problem with him.

“Fuck, I think they might actually be relieved,” Jonny says. “They basically gave up hope of me ever having kids when you showed up.”

Patrick has to grin a little. “Ruined you for women, that’s what I did.”

“You did,” Jonny says, dead serious, and Patrick looks back at him and—and Jonny’s parents are in the next room, but Jonny sinks into Patrick without making a sound and they rock together and bite each other’s lips against the noises they want to make and grip each other so tight that they wear the bruises the next morning.

***

The circus trip is coming up, and it’s making Patrick nervous. He and the baby are doing well—Dr. Roslin’s pleased with how much his transformation has helped with fetal development—but she stresses to him how important the calming influence of pack can be in the third trimester.

“You’ve got a lot of growing to do,” she says. “It’s hard work for your body to do everything it needs to in the shortened gestation period of a male omega. Contact with your pack, and especially your mate, will be important for that.”

And Patrick knows that. He’s all about that. But Jonny’s the only pack he has here in Chicago, and it’s not like Jonny can just not go on the circus trip.

It doesn’t help that Patrick’s getting really huge now. His feet and ankles keep getting sore, even when he hasn’t been walking around much, and the only thing that makes it better is when Jonny sits on the couch next to him at night and massages them. His hands are slow and firm, and it makes Patrick’s head loll back against the arm of the couch and his eyes flutter shut. Sometimes Patrick falls asleep like that, even though Jonny’s the one who went to practice or played a game that day.

He does that the night before Jonny’s scheduled to leave: they were going to have sex, but then Jonny started rubbing Patrick’s feet, and now his hands are running up and down Patrick’s arches, sending tingles all the way up to Patrick’s scalp. Patrick tries to stay awake—he really, really wants to have sex with Jonny—but his eyes are drifting closed, and he can’t fight it.

When he opens them again, it’s maybe half an hour later, and Jonny’s asleep with his head resting on Patrick’s stomach.

Patrick looks at him lying there, eyelids closed and mouth a little slack with sleep, and he feels such a wave of affection that he has to fight not to make a sound. Not just affection: attachment. Need. Love. He needs Jonny like he needs his own body—and he’s going to be without him for ten days, but right now that feels smaller than the fact of this bond between them. Than the existence of this man, sleeping on his stomach with his ear pressed against their baby.

Something must change in Patrick’s breathing, because Jonny blinks awake. Slowly, eyelids held down by syrup. He looks up at Patrick. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Patrick says, and he almost can’t speak.

Jonny leans up, slow, still dreamy with sleep, and presses a kiss to his mouth.

It’s a slow, hot kiss. No urgency right now, just simmering warmth, and Patrick sinks into it. Savors the slide of Jonny’s tongue against his own. 

Jonny’s hands glide up very slowly under the hem of his shirt. When it’s bunched under Patrick’s armpits, Jonny helps him lean up, gently, and he takes it off over his head. Then Patrick gets his hands on the buttons of Jonny’s shirt and undoes them one by one, and they do the same with their pants: slow, slow, like it’s a ceremony instead of the rush it usually is, until Patrick’s lying naked on his back on the couch and Jonny’s regarding him from above.

“So beautiful,” Jonny whispers, and he looks bewildered, like this is too much for him, like he’s lost to it. 

Jonny fucks him slow, so slow, like they’re caught in a dream—but it’s more real than any dream Patrick’s ever had, asleep or waking. More real than anything else in his life. Long, slow strokes that make the heat in Patrick’s belly rise higher and higher. Jonny locks eyes with him, and just like that, Patrick can feel it: the heat that’s in Jonny’s belly, too, different from his own and yet so much the same. The two of them rising together. Using these parts of their bodies for a common purpose, finding their pleasure in each other and handing it back over for the other to taste. It grows and it swells and it rushes until it slips its bonds and they’re flying together, no longer Patrick and Jonny but PatrickandJonny: one body moving in two different ways until it finds where it’s meant to be, until perfection bursts upon it and they’re crying out, two voices, one voice, one orgasm ripping through them and leaving them gasping.

There’s nothing to say after that. Jonny comes down to lie next to Patrick and they hold each other, sweaty and trembling and not needing a single word.

***

And then Jonny has to leave.

They don’t fuck the next morning. Patrick doesn’t want to…to blunt the memory of last night, maybe. He’ll have sex with Jonny so many more times in their lives, hundreds, thousands of times, but for these ten days he wants to hold the memory of that time within him. He doesn’t even want to put in the plug, because he wants the last thing inside of him to have been Jonny’s cock last night. He wants to stay in that perfect moment for the entire ten days Jonny’s gone, preserve it without blemish.

Jonny holds him for a long time by the door before he leaves. Patrick breathes in his scent so that he’ll be able to remember it. “What are you doing later today?” Jonny asks in his ear after a while.

“Probably lying on the couch,” Patrick says. He hopes this doesn’t mean an end to the holding; he needs at least ten more minutes of this before he’s ready to even think about letting Jonny go out the door. “Watching hockey and being jealous. Texting Abby to bring me cinnamon raisin bagels. Why, you have plans?”

“Just wondering,” Jonny says, and then he bends down and kisses him.

Patrick gets at least fifteen minutes of kissing before Jonny gets out the door. It’s still not enough.

It’s not that bad, though. Patrick makes himself his favorite sandwich these days (avocado and kale; he is deeply disturbed by how much Jonny approves of it, but hey, the stomach wants what it wants). Then he fields some of the texts that have been building up on his phone, because he’s been out on IR for almost two months now, and people are getting seriously concerned about him. The NHL wolf chat has a guessing game going where every day Kesler will guess a body part that Patrick might have injured, and Sid and Eric will shout him down for being insensitive.

Today Kesler’s guess is ten ingrown toenails. Patrick doesn’t even feel guilty about sending back a _nope_ the way he does on other days. He shouldn’t be lying to the other wolves, not when they’re the one group who would actually understand about this and keep it secret, but he can’t face them knowing, and—toenails? Really?

He’s just sent Kesler a picture of his feet with all the toes folded down except the middle ones when the doorbell rings.

This could be bad. There aren’t a lot of people who come to Jonny’s door. Normally the doorman calls up, so if they got by him, it means they’re either someone Jonny knows, or they live in the building. And pretty much everyone Jonny knows in Chicago just boarded a plane for Edmonton.

Fuck. That means it’s probably a neighbor. Unless it’s Abby, but she would have texted, and what if it’s, like, someone from the condo association? What if there’s important Jonny’s-condo business and this person has a key and they think no one’s home and—

Okay, well, Patrick doesn’t really want to have a panic attack in the first two hours Jonny’s gone. He could at least go look through the peephole.

It’s awkward, leaning forward to press his eye to the peephole over his pregnant belly. But he looks through and—

And then he’s fumbling the door open, breath caught in his throat, and pulling the door open to stumble into the arms of five waiting Kanes.

“You—you guys are supposed to be in school,” he says through the thickness in his throat as his sisters all hug him and his parents glom on from the outside.

“Evidently there was a family emergency,” Erica says, and fuck, Patrick’s really crying now, and it’s a good thing that his family pushes him inside before the whole building notices how loud they’re being.

“Jonny thought it would be a good idea,” Patrick’s mom says fifteen minutes later, when Patrick’s dried his eyes and installed them in the guest rooms (Jonny only has two, but it’s not a problem—Jackie’s sleeping with Patrick). “He said something about pack.” And then Patrick has to hug her again and get her shoulder all damp.

There’s a lot of that, as the afternoon goes on. They seem to recognize that what Patrick needs is just to absorb their presence, because they all pile onto the couch and neighboring chairs with him and don’t even talk very much, until a few hours later when Erica goes to the bathroom and comes back and bursts out with, “What the hell, Pat! You don’t even have a crib?”

“Language,” Patrick says sleepily, because he’s buried under a Jackie and a Jess and he’ll never get tired of chirping his sisters for using words the team uses about five hundred times per practice. But then Jackie starts poking him in the arm.

“You really don’t have a crib?” she says.

“You might want to think about getting one of those,” his mom says.

And that’s how Patrick ends up letting his mom and sisters loose on the city of Chicago with a far-too-powerful credit card.

“You don’t want to see it,” he tells Jonny the next night when he calls. “You don’t want to know what they’ve done.”

“What? What happened?” Jonny asks in alarm.

“Diapers,” Patrick says. “They’ve filled our apartment with diapers.”

Patrick doesn’t know the sex of the baby—he and Jonny decided they didn’t want to know—and he feels like that should be an argument in favor of waiting to buy clothes, or at least for buying the gender-neutral stuff. His mom and sisters, though, seem to think it’s an argument for buying boys’ _and_ girls’ clothes, and also a whole bunch of gender-neutral onesies with pigs and turtles and shit on them, and basically everything else they can find.

“Does the Blackhawks store even have anything left?” he asks one day when they come back laden down with bags with the team logo on them.

“Don’t ask,” his dad says.

“Whatever you say, this does not count as a birthday present!” he calls out to Jess, who throws a stuffed Tommy Hawk at him in passing.

It’s not all buying stuff. They also clear out one of Jonny’s guest rooms and paint it yellow, even though Patrick argues that it doesn’t make sense when all of them are still staying with him. “This is more important,” his mom says. “And anyway, we can always stay at Trump Tower.”

And, good point. Patrick had kind of forgotten his own condo existed. He should…hm. He should maybe go check on that, make sure no one’s broken in or anything.

His family treks over to check it out once Patrick admits he hasn’t actually been there in months, and also so that Patrick can have his doctor’s appointment in peace. It’s kind of a relief, right up until Dr. Roslin asks him if he’s thought about his options.

“Options?” he repeats, because he’s pretty sure it’s too late to do anything but have a baby at this point.

“For delivery,” she says, and fuck, that is one thing he has definitely not been thinking about. Not that it’s been deliberate or anything. Nope. No one can prove anything.

Now that he’s started thinking about it, he really, really wishes he hadn’t. “Oh my God,” he says. “I don’t have to…like, out of my…”

She waves a hand. “We would do a Caesarean. But if you’re willing to give birth in wolf skin, your body would take care of it for you.”

Something relaxes in the vicinity of Patrick’s ass. “You mean, I would have, like…”

“The wolf would create a birth channel,” she says, as calmly as if she hadn’t just told him he could grow his own wolf vagina.

He’s still hyperventilating over that one a little when she goes on to say, “It’s a longer delivery process, especially with multiple births, but the recovery is a lot faster.”

“Whoa,” he says, straightening instantly, at least as well as he can with an enormous belly in front of him that he thought contained _only one baby oh my God._ “Multiple births, you’re talking, like, theoretically, right, because—”

“Well, single births are very rare among wolves,” she says, like she’s telling him things he already knows. “The average is between four and five, but that’s when both parents are wolves. A litter of three is a bit on the small side.”

That’s…yup. That wheezing sound is definitely Patrick.

“Are you all right?” she asks, and when he flutters a hand at her she puts an arm around his shoulders and starts telling him to breathe. Then she puts his phone in his hand.

He’s calling Jonny before he can think about it. He knows they aren’t flying right now—they don’t leave for San Jose until tomorrow—but Jonny could be in practice and Patrick doesn’t even care, barely draws a breath until Jonny answers and sounds understandably confused about the way Patrick’s babbling at him right now.

“Three,” Patrick keeps saying, and he knows he’s not making a lot of sense, but holy fuck, _three._ “Three, Jonny, there’s three, there’s…”

It takes a minute for Jonny to get it, and when he finally does, he says, “Three?” in this voice like maybe he should be sitting down right now. And then Patrick feels it, through the bond: a burst of joy, stronger than almost anything he’s ever felt from Jonny when they weren’t touching.

“Patrick,” Jonny says, and he sounds stricken, so much so that if Patrick couldn’t feel him through the bond, he’d think he were upset. But—happy, he’s happy, so happy. “Patrick. We’re going to have a pack.”

And Patrick lets out a sob into the phone, because he can still feel Jonny’s happiness coursing through him.

When he gets off the phone, he texts his mom and dad: _Better pick up a couple of extra cribs._

***

After that, Patrick just lies back and lets his family buy out Chicago. Fuck knows they’re going to need it, with three babies on the way.

Three babies. It doesn’t feel real to him at all. He doesn’t try too hard to make it real; they’ll be there soon enough, and in the meantime he can cuddle up with his family warm and cozy around him. He and Jackie take to their wolf forms more often than not now, since the different bone structure makes his stomach a little less uncomfortable. Plus, Dr. Roslin thinks it’ll ease the birth if his body is more used to the other form.

Things seem easier in the wolf form, too. It’s easier to think _pack_ and _home_ rather than _three babies oh my God,_ and it’s easier to pick up Jonny’s scent where it still lingers on everything in the condo. Easier to wrap himself up in the feeling of _mate._

He still misses Jonny, more and more as the week goes on, even with his family all around him. They can give him touch, yeah, but they can’t give him _Jonny’s_ touch.

“Four more days,” Jonny says when he calls him from San Jose the evening before their game. Patrick can feel it in his voice how much he wants to be back, too; how much it’s not only Patrick. It makes him breathe easier, just knowing he’s not alone in this.

The last few days are going to be especially bad, because his family needs to go back home. They have an awesome Thanksgiving dinner—somehow, his dad manages to shunt enough baby stuff into the guest rooms that they can eat in the dining room without being surrounded by bouncy chairs and pallets of wet wipes—and then they have to get on a plane, because his dad has to work over the weekend and the girls have exams to study for.

“We’ll be back out in a couple of weeks, I’m sure,” his mom says at the door, getting teary-eyed (and, okay, maybe Patrick is a little bit, too; it’s his mom, okay?).

They all hug for a really long time, Patrick committing to memory the feeling of everyone’s arms around him to get him through the next few days. His pack.

***

He’s been so worried about the next few days: about getting through them without his family, without Jonny, when he’s so close to his due date. It turns out he’s been worrying about entirely the wrong thing.

It’s ironic, really. Patrick’s been so good about not leaving the condo. He hasn’t been outside since he really started to show, and even before that he made himself scarce. So of course he would be standing right in the middle of the living room when it happens.

He doesn’t even realize it’s happened at first. He gets a text from Sharpy in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday; Abby’s just left after having lunch (and exclaiming very loudly about the amount of baby stuff, because Patrick’s not alone in thinking his family is crazy), and Patrick expects Sharpy to be chirping him about owning an entire city’s worth of diapers. But what it actually says is, _Gonna fuck their shit up, peeks, swear to god._

Patrick frowns at the phone. _What, the kings?_ he sends back, because…yeah, he wants them to beat the Kings, too, but it’s not like it’s a rivalry he’s super invested in. Maybe if it were last week against the Canucks.

He doesn’t get anything back from Sharpy right away. But he does get something from an old Juniors buddy he hasn’t talked to in years: just a string of question marks. Then from Burs, _Deadspin wtf,_ and his hand starts shaking.

He doesn’t want to look. He shouldn’t look. He doesn’t, for nearly a minute, and then he opens the Safari app, typing sloppily and getting it wrong twice, and when he finally gets to the site he sees…

The outside of Jonny’s building. A grainy shot, in through a window, curtains dark stripes on the side. And himself, standing in the middle of the living room, stomach a firm, round ball in front of him.

Patrick drops the phone.

He doesn’t notice when he himself hits the floor. His knees are wedged awkwardly in front of him, his arms wrapped around everything. Then—oh fuck, oh fuck, he’s pushing himself up again, stumbling and almost losing his balance with the stomach, running for the drapes and yanking them closed. He pulls so hard the rods almost come out of their sockets, and then he tips his head against the curtain-covered window and balls his hands up in the fabric, fists so tight they hurt.

His stomach, like a big round ball in front of him.

There’s a buzzing from the doorway. He ignores it, but it comes again, and again, and finally he goes over and presses the button.

“Mr. Kane?” his doorman says. “Someone’s here to see you, I think he’s a reporter—”

“Fuck no,” Patrick says, and lets go of the button. He staggers back into the living room and stumbles a little and ends up back onto the floor. Wraps his arms around himself again.

He could deny it. They could—Photoshop. It could have been Photoshopped. Or—

His phone is ringing. It’s ringing like crazy, actually. Patrick picks it up to silence it, except it’s Jonny, and he stares at it for a minute before he slides his thumb to answer.

“Pat.” Jonny sounds like he’s been running. “Pat, I just saw, oh my God, are you okay—”

“It’s all over,” Patrick says, and then he hangs up the phone and holds down the button to turn it off and lies on his side on the carpet and closes his eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

It must be hours later when a knock on his door wakes him up.

Patrick winces. It’s too loud. He wants it to go away.

“Patrick?” someone shouts through the door. “Patrick, I know you’re in there. Open up.”

A woman’s voice. Abby. Patrick drags himself off the floor.

It is Abby, on the other side of the door. She looks at him and her face changes, goes miserable. “Oh my God,” she says. “Come here.”

He lets her hug him in the foyer. Then she pulls back and gets out her phone. “Hang on, important call to make.” There’s a pause while the phone rings, and then she says, “Yeah, I’ve got him. Yeah. No, he’s okay.”

“Jonny?” Patrick asks, his heart doing a great fluttering leap.

Abby puts a hand on his back and keeps talking into the phone. “Yeah, he’s right—sure.” She passes the phone to him.

“Jonny,” Patrick says into the phone, and Jonny says, “Fucking hell, Patrick, you can’t do that to me.”

Jonny’s voice sounds awful, the kind of shaky anger that comes from panic, and Patrick suddenly thinks about how bad it must have been for him if he sent Abby over to find out—what? If Patrick was alive?

“Jonny,” he says. “Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’m not the one this is hardest on,” Jonny says, but his voice is thick with relief. “What about you, are you—”

“No,” Patrick says. He’s not okay. “I—” And he doesn’t know what to say. This has always been the hard stop: the world finding out about him. He’s never had a plan for this. Just plans to keep this from happening.

“I don’t know what to do,” he admits in a whisper.

“Just sit tight,” Jonny says. “I’m coming for you.”

***

Abby sticks around all that evening. It’s more embarrassing, being a shocky mess with her there, but Patrick’s glad to have her. He’s not sure how much more he would be going out of his skin, if he were alone.

He doesn’t turn his phone back on—Jonny texts Abby when he wants to check in. They don’t look at the internet or the television, either. It’s almost like nothing has changed, except that everything has.

Patrick’s never been gladder that Abby’s not a chatty type. He’s seen her with Sharpy sometimes, bright and bubbly and holding her own in a chirping war, but with him, right now, she’s calm and efficient and quiet. Her nurse mode, he realizes.

“Hey,” she says right before he heads off to bed, ridiculously early but he can’t face being awake anymore. “I know a lot of people that this won’t change anything for.”

“Thanks,” he says, because it’s nice of her even if it doesn’t mean that much. And then he goes to sleep and dreams of the day before something’s going to be destroyed, an asteroid hitting the planet, all the air going out of the atmosphere, that moment when it’s just the feeling of dread and knowing you have no more time left.

***

He wakes up to sounds in the hallway, and for a second he’s terrified—they’ve gotten in, they’ve come for him, they’re going to take away everything he has left—but then he can feel that it’s Jonny, and he stumbles out of the room and into Jonny’s arms.

“Patrick.” Jonny’s shaky and clingy, and—and he’s _early,_ he must have gotten on a red-eye right after the game. “Oh my God, I can’t believe—”

“I can,” Patrick says, and it’s only half a lie. It doesn’t feel real yet—but it’s what he’s been waiting for, the other shoe to drop, for the entire three and a half years he’s been in Chicago.

“In the fucking _living room,”_ Jonny says. “I’m gonna fucking tear them apart, I swear.”

Patrick pushes closer into Jonny’s arms. This—this is one thing he won’t lose. At least—not unless they start talking about trades, putting him somewhere else—and then his stomach twists and he doesn’t want to think anymore.

“Fuck me?” he asks.

Jonny startles a little. “Are you sure you want…”

“Make me stop thinking,” Patrick says, because his head’s been too full since yesterday and he’s tired of everything that’s inside it.

Jonny puts him on his hands and knees and rims him until he’s babbling nonsense, and then he puts him on his side and fucks him until even the babbling has evaporated and there’s nothing in his head but pleasure and _now_ and want and peace.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick whispers when Jonny crawls into his arms after. “For always making you pick up the pieces.”

Jonny strokes a hand up Patrick’s side where the sweat is drying. “What makes you think I mind picking up the pieces?”

“Yeah, but…” Patrick breathes through the thick, choked feeling that’s creeping back into his chest now that Jonny’s not fucking him anymore. “I feel like all I’ve done this year is fall apart, you know? All you’ve been doing is taking care of me because I can’t take care of myself.”

Jonny presses his nose against Patrick’s cheek. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’ve had kind of a few things on your plate.” He breathes, warm against Patrick’s cheek. “And I’m pretty sure that’s my job, anyway, taking care of you.”

“You shouldn’t have to do it like this, though,” Patrick says. He feels small even though Jonny’s arms are wrapped around him.

“I want to.” Jonny nuzzles into his neck. “That’s why I’m your alpha, remember? It means I’ll take all of it. It means I _want_ all of it. Every last freakout.” He closes his teeth around Patrick’s ear. “I have dibs.”

Patrick takes in a shaky breath. Jonny will take it. Every last freakout. “Is it bad, out there?”

Jonny’s quiet for a moment, and that’s maybe the scariest answer he could have given. “It will blow over,” he says.

“They’ll never—they won’t _forget.”_ This is why Patrick never wanted anyone to know. They’ll know forever, and it will always be the first thing people see when they look at him. Even if he’s the best player the Hawks have ever had, he’ll always be a wolf first.

And that’s if he gets to keep playing.

“I won’t let anyone hurt you,” Jonny says, and maybe Patrick should feel ashamed of needing to hear that, but it makes him feel better anyway, makes the tension in his chest lessen just enough for him to press closer to Jonny and fall back to sleep.

***

The things they’re saying about him are just what Patrick expected.

Like, it probably shouldn’t hurt as much as it does, because he isn’t surprised by any of it. He doesn’t read the really bad comments—those are the ones that make Jonny stand up and walk away—but even the articles on the professional sites are pretty grim. Wolves are violent and disgusting and have no place on professional sports teams. He should be ashamed of himself for setting himself up as a role model. If the Blackhawks knew what was good for them, they’d tear up his contract in a second.

“They won’t,” Jonny says. “They love you. They’d never listen to these idiots.”

Stan, though. Stan, who Patrick had trusted. Stan, who couldn’t make eye contact with him when he found out.

“What if they just buy out my contract?” he says.

“I’d walk off,” Jonny says immediately.

“Like fuck you would,” Patrick says. “I wouldn’t fucking let you do that.”

“I’d ask for a trade,” Jonny says. “I’d never score another single point for them.”

He says it again a few hours later when Sharpy and Duncs and Seabs are over, having braved the gauntlet of reporters clustered around the building. There are actually more of them than there were yesterday, and Patrick kind of wants to hurt them somehow but apparently it’s not actually illegal for them to be there, as long as they don’t try to force their way in.

“We’d all walk off,” Sharpy says.

“In a heartbeat,” Seabs says immediately. “Massive strike.”

Patrick casts an eye towards Duncs—he’s been pretty quiet about the wolf thing since he found out, even though he’s come to visit a couple of times since then. He’s nodding, though. “Maybe we could get the NHLPA on it,” he says.

“Yeah, you can’t be the only wolf in the league, right?” Seabs says.

Patrick closes his hand around his phone. Jonny’s offered to go through it and delete all the texts Patrick wouldn’t want to see, but Patrick can’t let him do that. Not when there’s a group text on there that would be very revealing of other people’s secrets.

He needs to go through it himself, but he’s putting it off—watching the news has been bad enough, and it’s a lot more dispassionate than the stories online. He’s been letting Jonny filter those for him, and even what Jonny lets him see is pretty bad.

All he’s managed to do so far on his phone is respond to his family. He needs to go through it, though. He can’t curl up behind closed drapes and hide forever. And he’d maybe rather do it when he’s got some support around him.

“Sit here, okay?” he says to Jonny, and positions himself against the arm of the couch with his legs across Jonny’s lap. The other guys are spread out around the living room, watching some sports show that just did a segment on Patrick’s thing and now is talking about NFL standings. Jonny tightens his hand around Patrick’s ankle, and Patrick unlocks his phone.

It’s…not as bad as he expected. He guesses the people who really want to rip into him are doing it on the internet instead. There’s a lot of surprise and basic _dude what_ sentiment from former teammates. Gags sent him a string of heart emoticons and then _tho i hate to break it to you man but you got fat._ Jackie sent him all the lyrics to “Born This Way.” And then there’s the team—Patrick’s guessing Jonny or Sharpy said something to them last night, because all their texts are things like _hang in there_ and _u da best._ It’s not everyone—some guys on the team didn’t text at all, and Patrick tries not to feel as anxious about that as he does—but it’s a lot of them. Most of them.

And then there are the other texts that make him hit delete and then block contact. He tries not to look at those for too long.

Jonny runs a hand up and down his leg. Patrick scrolls back to a text from Brisson that he’s going to need to respond to, something about taking control of the story, but he gets distracted by the NHL wolf group text. There’s one from Sidney he hadn’t noticed earlier—just a _you might want to be by your TVs this afternoon._

Patrick’s frowning at that and trying to make heads or tails of it when Sharpy says, “Uh, Peeks, I think you should watch this.”

It’s Sidney Crosby, on screen with a reporter Patrick’s met but forgotten the name of. The reporter’s asking what Sidney thinks about the photo of Patrick.

“I think it’s a huge invasion of privacy,” Sidney says. He’s in a suit, leaning forward over a table in some studio somewhere. “If Kane didn’t want photos of himself like that out in public, that should have been his call. But I’m thrilled for him, really. He looks great.”

The reporter’s squinting, like that wasn’t at all the answer he expected. “It must be pretty shocking for everyone in the League, though. Do you think there’ll be a lot of backlash?”

“Well, it can definitely be hard for us wolves, being in the public eye,” Sidney says, and the reporter actually _does a double take._

“Whaaaaat,” Duncs says.

“Holy fuck,” Seabs says.

“He—wait.” Sharpy looks over at Patrick and Jonny accusingly. “Did you guys know about this? Oh my God, you knew about this!”

_“I_ didn’t,” Jonny says.

Patrick does something that might be a shrug. He’s—he’s reeling, and Jonny’s hands are gripping his legs so hard it actually hurts a little. “Like I’m going to tell you all my secrets.”

“Sorry,” the reporter’s saying onscreen. “Did you just say—”

“I think it’ll be rough on Kane, being forcibly outed like that,” Sidney says. “But the rest of us wolves in the league are gonna be here to support him, and, you know, at the end of the day, it’s about playing hockey, and he’s a damn fine hockey player.” His face flickers into a smile. “And once he’s done popping that baby out, it’ll be great to play against him again.”

The reporter looks like he’s trying to figure out exactly what kind of semi truck just slammed into him. “But—you—”

“Commercial, man, go to commercial,” Sharpy says. “Take pity on him,” and then the show actually does, and Patrick’s left staring at an ad for running shoes.

“Did that really just happen?” Seabs asks.

“Sidney Crosby just outed himself on national TV,” Jonny says to Patrick in a low voice. “For you.”

Patrick bites his lip and nods. His eyes are prickling, and he can’t quite manage to speak at the moment.

“Fuck, we don’t have names for our kids yet, do we?” Jonny says in a choked voice.

“Hey. You cannot name them after Sidney,” Sharpy says. “I have dibs.”

“Um, I’m not naming my kid _Patrick,”_ Patrick says.

“No, no, gotta go with Sharpy,” Sharpy says. “Sharpy Kane. Sharpy Toews?”

“Sharpy Kane-Toews,” Jonny says, covering Patrick’s hand with his, and Patrick makes a face.

“That is literally the worst.”

“Man, Twitter is blowing up,” Seabs says. “And we thought it was big when it was just Kaner.” He scrolls a little. “Look, here’s someone who thinks Sidney should be traded. How original.”

“I don’t get how they can say stuff like that,” Duncs says. And then, when he notices them all staring at him, he says, “What? I don’t say that shit _now.”_

The group text on Patrick’s phone is blowing up, too. _Um did we know Sid was doing that?_ Jamie Benn sends.

_Considering we DIDN’T KNOW PEEKS WAS PREGNANT, i wouldn’t expect us to know shit,_ Kesler responds. _Congrats on that btw._

Patrick grins and starts to respond, but his door buzzer sounds. Seabs lopes up to it. “Go for it,” he says to the person on the other end.

“If it’s reporters, tell them where they can shove their steno pads,” Sharpy calls over.

“Yeah, Mr. Kane, there’s a.” The doorman hesitates. “There’s a wolf here to see you.”

There’s a pause where they all look at each other. “Yeah, I’ll be right down,” Jonny says.

Patrick wants to go with him, but everyone recognizes how stupid that would be. There are still dozens of reporters out there. So he sits and tries to keep his heart rate down to avoid stressing out the babies until Jonny comes back in with—

“Gemma,” Patrick says after a minute in which he tries to remember her name. He hasn’t seen her since a couple of years ago in the wolf bar, with Josh. Who is, presumably, the great shaggy wolf who comes trotting in after her.

“They said they know you,” Jonny says, a question in his voice.

Gemma’s gaze fixes on his belly, and her eyes fill with tears. “Patrick,” she says, one hand over her mouth. “Oh, Patrick, look at you.”

Patrick’s not sure he quite merits that reaction, but he lets her hug him, and Josh comes up and noses at his belly.

“We didn’t think we’d be able to convince the doorman to let us in he didn’t know one of us was a wolf,” Gemma says. “Do you have somewhere he can change?”

Patrick shows them to the guest room—the one that hasn’t been taken over by baby stuff. Wolves can change in front of people, of course, but since they aren’t wearing clothes when they change back, it’s usually better to do it in private.

When they come out, Josh hugs Patrick like they’re long-lost brothers. It should maybe be a little weird, since they haven’t seen each other in years and it’s not like they knew each other well back then, but it just feels normal. A wolf thing that Patrick hasn’t done much of for the last few years, but one he knows in his bones.

When Josh pulls back, his eyes are a little bit wet, too. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just—when we met you, a couple of years ago, you seemed so…” He smiles a watery smile. “This is more than we could have hoped for you.”

“Sorry for busting in on you like this,” Gemma says. “We just thought you might need support.”

“And if you ever need anywhere to fit in.” Josh’s eyes twinkle. “Well, I know I’ve made this offer before.”

It’s not something Patrick’s been thinking about. He’s mostly been focused on being inside, being safe—but as soon as Josh says it, he thinks of the club and feels a fierce desire to be back there. In a room that’s full of wolves, where he doesn’t have to worry about anyone judging him for what they just learned about him. Where he’s still safe, even now.

He looks over at Jonny. And maybe Jonny can read what’s in his eyes, or maybe he can read him through the bond, but either way, he nods once. “We’ll figure something out.”

“What?” Sharpy says from the living room, where he and Duncs and Seabs have been hovering on the edge of the conversation. “What are we figuring out?”

“How to sneak Patrick out to a wolf club,” Jonny says.

Sharpy grins, wide and a little scary. “Oh, leave it to me.”

***

What ends up happening is that Sharpy gives an impromptu interview in the lobby so that Patrick can sneak out the back door. “Are you sure the front office is going to be okay with this?” Jonny asks.

Sharpy is still smiling his slightly terrifying grin. “Trust me, I’ll be so charming they’ll be thanking me afterward.”

Patrick would doubt it, but if anyone could pull that off, it would be Sharpy.

He ends up sneaking out with Jonny and Josh and Gemma. Duncs and Seabs looked like they wanted to come, but Gemma told them they wouldn’t be able to get in. “Jonny and I only make the cut because we’re bondmates,” she said, and Duncs and Seabs looked ridiculously sad for two guys who didn’t even know wolf clubs existed until tonight.

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to be going to this?” Jonny asks as they walk down the street, Patrick bundled in, like, this enormous old parka of Jonny’s that’s probably meant for ice fishing or something, because it was the only thing that would fit over his baby bump.

“They’ll love you,” Patrick says, and it still feels terrifying to do this on a public street, even when it’s too dark for them to be recognizable, but he reaches over and takes Jonny’s hand.

A different alpha is working the door than the one Patrick met a couple of years ago. She gives Jonny a once-over, but the bond has to be obvious to anyone with a sense of smell, because she waves them in.

It’s just like Patrick remembers. Glowing dark wood and the rumble of conversation and wolves, everywhere, the smell of them thick in the air and so much more alive than anything else Patrick ever smells around Chicago.

He takes a few steps into the room before he catches the double-take of someone recognizing him. Then a few more heads turn—and then more and more, and—oh, fuck, they’re rising to their feet. The whole room is giving him a standing ovation.

Patrick looks around, at all the smiling faces. All the wolves who know what he did—what he is—what he’s going through—they’re on their feet and cheering. They look like they could cheer him forever.

Jonny comes up behind him and wraps his arms around him. And Patrick—Patrick starts to cry.

***

Patrick gets more hugs that night than he’s maybe gotten in his life. Jonny gets them, too, and he looks startled by it—and this is a guy who grew up with hockey, with people slamming their bodies together after every good thing on the ice. But this is wolf culture. It’s touchier by far.

Patrick’s also never had so many people stroke his stomach before. He nods yes every time anyone reaches out in question, and so hands and paws of all kinds pet the taut skin and he feels like the babies are being loved, too.

Maybe they feel it, because they start kicking like nobody’s business. It’s not Patrick’s favorite thing about being pregnant—those tiny baby legs can pack a wallop—but he loves that they’re doing it now. That they recognize that they have their people around them.

Patrick and Jonny stay until it’s late enough that there won’t be any reporters at the back door of Jonny’s building anymore, and then they say a tearful goodbye to Josh and Gemma (well, on Patrick’s part, and maybe theirs) and head home.

It was a good night. Patrick feels recharged by it, like everyone who touched him was granting him some of their energy. His body feels really awake, really alert, really _his._

He’s aware of Jonny, too: of his body in the elevator next to Patrick, of the flush in his cheeks and the pink of his lips. Of the way his eyes sharpen into want when they meet Patrick’s.

They’re barely inside when Patrick drags him to the bedroom, and Jonny fucks him on his hands and knees, rubbing Patrick’s nipples the whole time, until Patrick is practically shouting at how deep the pleasure goes. (Or maybe actually shouting, but whatever—Jonny’s neighbors can suck it up.)

After, when Jonny is spooned up against his back with one hand stroking back and forth on Patrick’s stomach, he says into Patrick’s ear, “You know, I don’t know if I’ve told you how much of a miracle this is.”

“Mm?” Patrick says. The stroking is really soothing, and he’s having trouble keeping his eyes open.

“I just—when I realized I was in love with you,” Jonny says. “I figured there were lots of things that I wouldn’t get. I didn’t really care about having the perfect family to show off to the press or whatever, but—kids. I figured it would be tough, that we’d have to adopt or use a surrogate or something. And I was okay with that, because, fuck, Patrick, it was you, but I still felt like I was saying goodbye to something, you know? To the idea of kids that would come from me and the person I loved.”

He moves a little closer, hooks his chin over Patrick’s shoulder. “But you. You gave that back to me. And I know it doesn’t matter, that we would love our kids no matter who their birth parents were, but you—you have babies inside of you. Babies that are part you and part me even though we’re both men, and, and, Patrick.” His voice cracks a little. “You are such a miracle.”

Patrick’s not sure he can speak. “Jonny,” he breathes out, and he turns around, and they kiss, biting and desperate and never, ever stopping.

***

It’s easier to take the articles, after that. Patrick feels like he has the entire Chicago wolf community standing behind him. And maybe that won’t help him with the hockey thing, but he’s trying not to think about that right now. He’s ten days short of his due date. He has more pressing concerns, literally: with the way the babies are shoving up against his bladder, he’s more worried about whether he can get to the bathroom in time than what people are saying on dumb blogs he shouldn’t be reading anyway.

“Why did I get pregnant again?” he grumbles when he drops a cup and has to wait for Jonny to come into the room to pick it up for him.

“Because we’re bad at condom usage,” Jonny says.

“Maybe if you didn’t have such powerful sperm,” Patrick mutters, and Jonny laughs and gets him one of the ice cream bars that Patrick could have sworn were all gone and Patrick’s going to love him forever.

“Everything looks on track,” Dr. Roslin says when she comes by for their next appointment (the reporters in front of the building have gotten somewhat less aggressive, but Patrick still tells her to use the back door). “You are a first-time parent, though, so they’re likely to be late.”

Patrick groans. If his stomach gets any bigger, he’s going to start falling over. And also he isn’t sure he has enough skin for that. “Can’t you just, like, get them out of me now?”

She arches an eyebrow. “Then you’d have to start taking care of them already.”

Shit. He hadn’t thought of that.

“Jonny, Jonny, we need some more books,” he says when Dr. Roslin leaves, because they don’t know how to take care of babies at _all,_ and Jonny just gives him a weird look and points to a pile of books on the night table.

“You mean like those?”

Patrick’s mouth dropped open. “When did you get books on baby care?”

“What did you think I’d been doing for the last four months, slacking off?” Jonny says, and of course he would already have studied. He probably has them on his Kindle, too, so he can read them on the road. Way to make Patrick feel like an inadequate mom.

“Okay, but you have to read them to me,” Patrick says, and then Jonny does while giving Patrick a foot massage, so Patrick’s pretty sure he wins.

The Hawks are on a homestand, thank goodness, because Patrick wouldn’t want to be this huge with no one around. Though he’s kind of hoping the babies hold out until after the road trip to San Jose and Colorado on the eleventh, because he doesn’t want Jonny to have to leave right after the babies are born. Even if he does want them out as soon as possible.

His mom calls him on the morning of the tenth. “So?” she says.

Patrick rolls his eyes. “It’s a due date, not, like, a guarantee. Come on, you’ve done this before.”

“They say that sex can help induce labor,” she says, and he almost has to hang up on her.

They do have sex, though, because Patrick might be huge but he’s also really sensitive right now, and Jonny’s in a competition with himself to see if he can break his record for number of times Patrick comes in one day (currently stuck at eight). Patrick always knew there was a reason he liked Jonny’s competitive streak.

“I’m still not sure I should go,” Jonny says when they’re lying in bed on the morning of the eleventh, about twenty minutes before he has to leave for his flight to San Jose.

Patrick shoves his shoulder. “Dr. Roslin said I probably have another week to go, remember?” he says. “You can’t just hang out here. The puck isn’t going to go into the goal by itself.”

“It might,” Jonny says, but Patrick can tell he’s just being contrary. And Patrick never wants to be what keeps Jonny away from hockey.

“Go,” he says, shoving Jonny’s shoulder again. “Shower so you don’t smell like you just fucked me through the mattress.”

Jonny leans over him, mouths a few inches apart. “You don’t want me to smell like that, to remember you on the plane?”

Patrick shivers. He does sort of want that. “You’ll make the other guys jealous,” he says, and Jonny smirks and kisses him and rolls off the bed and goes into the bathroom.

Patrick rolls off the bed after him, and he really means rolls, because there’s no other way he can get up these days. Good thing he has some solid core muscle strength. Jonny’s stuff is, of course, all over the floor around his suitcase, because he’s incapable of being anything other than a slob. “Hey, you forgot your phone charger,” he starts to shout, but then he stops because—oh fuck. Oh _fuck,_ that is definitely not something that should be coming out of his ass.

He stumbles into the wet patch on the carpet, the wet patch he has a very bad feeling about, and—oh. So _that’s_ what they mean by a contraction.

He ends up on his hands and knees, breathing through it. It’s not that bad, though he has a feeling they’ll get worse. But it’s really, really clear what’s going on now, and that’s not making the pain any easier to deal with.

“Patrick?” Jonny’s standing in the bathroom door, dripping wet. “Are you okay?”

“Um.” Patrick looks up at him from his spot on the floor and gives him wide innocent eyes. “Yes?”

Jonny looks at him for a moment. “You’re in labor, aren’t you?”

“Well,” Patrick says.

Jonny spins around and turns off the shower. “That’s it, I’m calling Q.”

“No, it’ll be fine,” Patrick says, even though he’s obviously lying. It’s just—there are _games_ and Jonny needs to be at them.

“Patrick.” Jonny gives him a hard stare. “You are my _partner_ and you are _having babies today_ and there is no fucking way on this green earth I am getting on a plane and flying away from you right now.”

Patrick looks up at him, at the hard set of his eyes. “Oh,” he says.

Jonny pulls him up and gives him a firm kiss, then lets him go. “Right, suitcases,” he says.

“Maybe if you’d actually finished packing yours,” Patrick says, but Jonny’s packing really fast now, lots of clothes being thrown into a bag, some of which might actually be swim trunks, but Patrick’s not questioning right now. Especially since, oh look, another contraction.

“You have to time them,” Jonny says as he helps Patrick down to the parking garage. “You have to know how long there is between them.”

“I know, I read the books,” Patrick says, even though he had maybe forgotten that part.

They call the people they need to from the car—or rather, Patrick does, because Jonny’s driving like a maniac and Patrick thinks bad things might happen if he tried to use a phone at the same time. His mom cries and starts yelling at his dad to buy plane tickets; Erica and Jackie and Jess make various high-pitched noises; Andrée starts saying a lot of fast things in French that are lost on Patrick; and Sharpy expresses his eternal hatred toward Patrick for having these babies when he’s going out of town.

“Like they won’t be meeting their Uncle Sharpy soon enough, anyway,” Patrick says, and Sharpy gets off the phone pretty quickly after that, sounding suspiciously choked up.

Patrick does let Jonny call Q. It’s not the kind of call anyone else should make for him. Jonny sounds all serious while he does it and even drives at a reasonable pace, and when he hangs up he grins and says, “He says congratulations.”

Patrick lets out a breath. He didn’t really think Q would hate him for taking Jonny away from the road trip, but—well, he sort of did.

Once they get to the hospital, Dr. Roslin’s there, and she bundles them into a private room. By this point, the contractions are happening more quickly, and Patrick’s starting to feel panicked, gulping for air. He’s not used to his body being out of his control like this, spasming and doing all kind of shit that he isn’t telling it to.

“Patrick.” Dr. Roslin puts her hands on his shoulders. “I know this is scary, but you need to calm down. It’s time for you to shift. Can you do that for me?”

Patrick nods. He can do that. Except that his body is so far beyond him right now, and that makes it hard find the centering wolf feeling that he usually grasps onto. He tries to breathe deep, but he can’t, and— “Jonny,” he gasps.

Jonny is right beside him. “You can do it, Pat,” he says in a calm voice. “You know how to do this. I know you can.”

His hand is tight on the back of Patrick’s neck, and Patrick takes a shuddering breath of relief. Jonny’s here. It’ll be fine. And just like that, the wolf is there—and it’s so easy to shift, to feel the fur run over his body and his muscles and bones change around the babies in his belly.

Dr. Roslin settles him on the bed, and Jonny sits down next to him. “We’re going to have babies,” Jonny whispers to him, and Patrick buries his snout in Jonny’s lap and feels the pain rip through him again.

***

It isn’t an afternoon he’s going to want to remember anytime soon. But when it’s over, three little cries fill the air.

Patrick’s human again, sweaty and exhausted and hurting in places he didn’t know could hurt. “Can I see them?” he says. “I want to see them.”

“They’re just getting cleaned off,” the nurse says.

“They’re beautiful,” Jonny says in this awed voice, because he gets to stand up, the lucky dick, because he didn’t just push three babies out through his lupine birth canal.

It seems like forever before the babies are placed in Patrick’s lap. They’re squirmy, moving a little inside their blanket wraps, and Jonny was right: they are beautiful.

“They’re so tiny,” Patrick says. His voice is high, and weird, but he can’t help it. There are babies in his lap. His babies.

One of them makes a face, and Patrick strokes over her cheek, and then—holy fuck, he’s stroking fur, because she’s shifted, right under his finger.

“She’s a wolf,” Jonny says, sounding stunned. Patrick cups his hand around the little fuzzy puppy, nosing her way toward her sister’s blanket.

“They’re all wolves,” Patrick says, and maybe he wouldn’t have expected to be happy about that—maybe he shouldn’t be—but happiness is a strong force, buoying him up. Three wolves. His little pack.

“It’s unusual to shift so young,” Dr. Roslin says. “We don’t usually see it before the second week.”

“They’re precocious,” Jonny says, and he sounds so proud and it’s such a ridiculous thing to be proud of that Patrick has to laugh, even though it hurts, like, his entire lower body. It makes the babies bounce a little on his lap.

He can’t take his eyes off them.

They’re two girls and a boy. Patrick keeps touching them, stroking over soft little heads and hands and feet and teeny-tiny ears on the humans and the fuzzy pointy ears and snout of the wolf pup. Jonny’s doing the same thing: it’s like they’re touch addicts. Baby addicts.

“Jonny. I think I’m a baby addict,” Patrick says, and Jonny buries his face in Patrick’s neck.

The other two are inspired by their sister, apparently, because they shift, also, and then there are three tiny blind wolf cubs crawling free of their blankets on Patrick’s lap.

“This was so, so worth it,” Jonny says in Patrick’s ear, and Patrick will never, ever disagree.

***

“This one is chewing my finger,” Erica says. “Unfair that they have teeth so young.”

“Only in one form,” Patrick says from the couch. He has another of the babies on his lap, also in her wolf form, so he’s considering never moving.

“You have to name them,” Jackie says. “This is getting ridiculous.”

Patrick looks over at Jonny, who’s snuggling the boy cub under his chin while Bryan hovers impatiently for his turn. Jonny’s wearing this look of surprised wonder that he seems to have at least fifty percent of the time these days. “What do you think,” Patrick says, “Stanley for all of them?”

Jonny makes a different face. A much less happy one.

“Ew,” Sharpy says from across the room. He must have taken the other girl from Erica. “You really have to figure out a way to keep diapers on them when they shift. I liked this shirt.”

“Now we know what she really thinks of you,” Patrick says, though it’s definitely a problem. They’re going to break the washer and dryer at the rate they’ve been using them.

“Mail came,” Patrick’s dad says, and hands him a huge stack of cards. Apparently it’s just an excuse to steal the baby from his lap, because that’s what his dad does a moment later.

“Rude,” Patrick says, and gives half a glance at the cards. They’re nice and all, but it turns out that lots of people want to send you cards when you’re an NHL star who just had three babies, even if you are a wolf. It got a lot less exciting after the second day.

He pauses on the first one, though, because…that’s Stan’s address.

He sort of doesn’t want to know what’s inside. He can’t just not open it, though, and so he scratches at the flap.

It’s probably just a note from Suzanne. That’s what he expects when he opens the card. But no, that’s definitely Stan’s handwriting.

It doesn’t say a lot. Just, _Congrats,_ and below it, _You’re a good kid._ But Patrick stares at it for a long time.

Jonny settles on the couch next to him. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” Patrick leans into Jonny’s side and rests his hand on the forehead of their baby boy. Looks around the room at the other two, in the arms of their aunt and uncle, everyone else crowded round. All the members of Patrick’s pack. “Yeah, I think everything’s gonna be okay.”

***

_Epilogue: One Year Later_

“I still think they’re too young for skates,” Jonny grumbles as he wrestles with the tiny laces on Jackie’s.

“It’s called the family skate, Jonathan,” Patrick says. “You have to bring your family.” He bounces Christopher on his knee and reaches out to snag Tricia before she can wander too far and fall over. “Just because you’re slow at tying skates.”

Jonny gives him a look of mock outrage, and Patrick grins and swoops up the other two and pushes off onto the ice. Tricia cheers and bangs her hands on her tiny helmet, and Christopher looks around curiously.

“See, this is skating,” Patrick says to them. “This is what your daddies do.”

He still feels a little uneasy, bringing them out to a public event like this, with everyone knowing what they are. But it feels different than it did a year ago. He knows there are people who’ll have his back, now, if anything goes down. He knows that the fans outnumber the haters, even if the latter are sometimes more vocal.

And he can look at the faces of his family and know how much it was worth it.

“Careful with my namesake, Peeks!” Sharpy calls as he and Abby skate by. Patrick gives him the finger where the babies can’t see it.

“Still not your namesake!” he calls back, and Sharpy just waves a hand like he’s heard it before.

Jonny skates up, scowling, his arms full of tiny wolf. “She shifted, and her skates came off.”

Patrick can’t help but grin. And then laugh, as Jackie bathes Jonny’s face with her tongue.

“It’s like none of you even know I’m the alpha,” Jonny grumbles.

Patrick’s smile broadens, and he skates closer.

Jonny’s frown deepens. “What?”

Patrick doesn’t say anything, just leans in and kisses him on the mouth, right in front of the entire Hawks organization.

When he pulls back, Jonny looks surprised and pleased. “What was that for?”

“I just love you, is all,” Patrick says, and then he skates backwards when Jonny tries to catch him. “Bet you can’t catch us!”

Tricia squeals, and they’re off, the five of them circling the ice, Patrick and Jonny and their tiny family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'd like to know more about the future of Patrick and Jonny's family, see my [rambly headcanon](http://linskywords.tumblr.com/post/148130541749/more-wolf-bbs)! There may also be some timestamps coming; we'll see what the muse has to say about it. :D


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